By Manuel Fernández
Since 6 August 2024, the workers of Cerámicas Lima S.A. (Celima) have been facing the devastating collective, mass dismissals carried out by the management.
In the first stage of the struggle, after three months the labor authorities dismissed the company’s case against 216 workers and ordered their immediate reinstatement and the payment of their outstanding wages. However, the company persisted in its abuse: not only did it refuse to comply with the decision and filed a controversial lawsuit against it, but it also filed a second collective dismissal, this time against 119 workers. This new dismissal includes the same people on the first list, minus those who resigned in the meantime, i.e. 86% of the union members, leaders, and all the recognized activists.
This new process has already been authorized and is currently underway. It is a bureaucratic and cumbersome process designed to wear down the workers and it can take more than a year to be resolved.
The first result was the fruit of the constant struggle that we have carried out as a union, with mobilizations and sit-ins that have won us the sympathy and support of important sectors of workers and forced the unions to take an interest in our struggle.
Now this struggle continues, after we have gone for more than 180 days without pay, without work, and in the streets, with a single determination: to defeat the bosses’ plan to destroy our trade union organization, which has weight within the Peruvian working class, under the pretext of an “excess of personnel”.
A regulation tailored to the bosses’ interests
Collective dismissals have been a constant threat to workers for years. More than a hundred unions have been affected by this measure, including those that represent workers in Papelera Atlas, Papelera Nacional, Hialpesa, BSH (Bosch), Cogorno, and recently San Lorenzo, Celima, and Ransa and DP World.
With this weapon, the bosses have been reducing and even eliminating the unions, replacing labor with rights with workers without rights or unions, all with the aim of inflicting a defeat on the working class as a whole. In the face of this situation, our rank and file has come to the fore, resisting with all its energy in the legal arena and on the streets, calling on the working class to unite to bury this abusive law and defend our right to work and for better wages.
At the same time, a wave of workers’ strikes is facing the same plan of attack of the bosses who refuse to budge on the list of workers’ demands. At the companies Cartonplas, Holcim-Agregados Calcáreos, Insumex and Forte, the workers have been on strike for an average of more than 60 days without any resolution to their list of demands.
Only workers’ unity can break the bosses’ attack
All this shows us that the heroic action of isolated unions is not enough to win. In order to defeat the collective strike at Celima and achieve effective solutions to the demands of the striking unions, we need to unite as a working class. This is especially true for those of us who are engaging in direct struggle: we need to organize centralized actions and to prepare a plan of struggle and a national strike.
This responsibility falls mainly on our leaderships in Fetrimap and the CGTP. But they are concentrating on managing the procedures with the labor authorities instead of fulfilling their main task, which is to unite and organize the struggle.
It is not about confronting a few bad employers who break the law, or about restricting this or that regulation, when they are all subject to the interests of the bosses. It is about organizing a workers’ response in defense of our rights, i.e. fighting for the abolition of collective firings and the suspension of contracts, and for the enforcement of the right to collective bargaining, the full right to strike, and trade union freedoms.
It is time for all of us to stand up and fight until we defeat the bosses’ attacks.
Jack Reyes, President of the Struggle Committee, says that “Our fight against the dismissals must be taken up by the whole working class”
What is the status of the new dismissal? And what are the next steps?
On 27 November 2024, Celima presented a second collective dismissal of 119 workers, a list that includes the entire board of directors and the main activists of SINTRACELIMA, as well as the group that defeated the first dismissal. It also added 26 more workers to reach the 10% of the total number of workers in the company, as required by law.
In the new dismissal, Celima corrected the errors identified by the Ministry of Labor and this time the dismissal was accepted. On November 27, 2024 we were informed and on January 2, 2025 the union presented our comments on the company’s expert report, but the deadline was extended for another month because the Labor Department was late in informing the non-affiliated workers (on January 16) that they had until February 6 to present their defense. In other words, thanks to the loopholes in the law itself and the inefficiency and apathy of the Labor Department, we have to keep waiting while we have now gone 6 months without being paid.
We have seen your actions in the struggle, which are well known in the working class, how do you evaluate the first phase of the struggle?
Favorably, because we managed to defeat the first collective dismissal in Celima, but the struggle is not over because the law allows the collective dismissal procedure to be presented again and again.
This is the experience of other factories such as Cogorno, Química Suiza, etc. And these are not the only problems facing the working class. There have been endless strikes, such as those at Cartonplas, Holcim, Insumex, Forte, which are a response to the unresolved issues or breaches of collective agreements and countless abuses against workers.
How are they organizing to resist? What support have they received?
We organize ourselves through our assemblies, where each action plan is explained and approved, by organizing sit-ins, demonstrations and other activities.
We have received declarations of support for our struggle from Colombia, Paraguay and Uruguay, and they have even sent letters to the Minister of Labor demanding respect for the right to work and the immediate reinstatement of the workers involved in the dismissals.
In addition, other trade union organizations took part in our mobilizations, giving more confidence and strength to our struggle. We also had a lot of support in our economic actions, which were successful thanks to the cooperation of SINTRACELIMA members and the very important solidarity and cooperation of the different trade union organizations.
Celima says it is in crisis. What is your response?
For us, the company is not in crisis, it has the economic solvency to resist. And if it is earning less now, it is because it has never bothered to modernize its machinery or improve its designs. So why should we be harmed by what the managers and owners failed to see?
We want the right to work to be respected, and we want respect for the workers who have spent their youth and their lives in the factory. The company has the means to move us, and if they don’t want us in the factory, they can employ us in their shops.
What is your strategy in the struggle?
The struggle we are facing is very hard and the conditions under which it is occurring are unfavorable to workers. The laws are in favor of the bosses and the state bodies are in favor of them too, so our struggle should not only be the struggle of the SINTRACELIMA workers, but a common struggle of all the workers that seeks to solve the broader problems of the working class.
