Bonds of $24,000 and $26,000 for rural areas add up to another trade rejection. Citrus producers, industrialists, nurseries and packers have expressed their refusal to pay the plus. They also warned of possible administrative and judicial actions against the measure ordered by the National Agricultural Labor Commission (CNTA).
“The Citrus Association of Northwest Argentina (Acnoa) has communicated its “disagreement with Decree 841/22 and Resolution (CNTA) 230, which impose a non-remunerative bonus of $24,000 on employers and another of $26,000 for rural generals.” in a statement.
According to the private body, “those decisions were made unilaterally, with no private sector involvement and with “closed parities”. Therefore, he considered that it was “a manifest ignorance of the constitutional provisions and that it altered the pattern of the current labor legislation”.
Similarly, the industry has spoken about the inability to meet those extraordinary payments that “They don’t match the economic and financial situation he faces.” And he founded this position by noting “the agricultural emergency for one year, ratified by the government of Tucumán with law 9.614 (of October 5, 2022) for the production activities of lemons and industrial products, as well as for citrus nurseries, without prejudice the claims at the highest levels of the nation, unanswered to date”.
“The citrus business directly and indirectly employs more than 100,000 jobs a year, They represent around 500,000 Argentines for the provinces of Catamarca, Jujuy, Salta and Tucumán, whose income comes 95% from the export of fresh fruit (basically lemon) and its industrial products,” the letter reads.
Acnoa argued that the agri-food sector has resisted over the past four years “economic losses in general”. In particular, he referred to the fact that in 2022 there had been “serious situations which led, in addition to profitability difficulties, to the waste of over 300,000 tons of fruit, which left producers with long experience in the supply chain on the sidelines” . the region”.
“This scenario has been greatly aggravated by the forced eradication at the end of 2022 of more than 6,500 hectares of lemon trees (12% of the total area) due to its low productivity and the inability to face the costs of exploitation by 2023 of other countless hectares. , with the loss of many jobs,” he said.
In this regard, he indicated that “for the foregoing, The picture of the situation prevents us from raising costs to our already lopsided production patterns. For this reason we declare the material impossibility of our sector to comply with the resolutions and the explicit adhesion to the claims that the various entrepreneurial entities that represent us formulate at the CNTA liaison table against these measures.
“Our associates reserve the right to oppose administratively and judicially the content of these resolutions”, he concluded.
The Citrus Association of Northwest Argentina represents more than 90% of citrus producers, industrialists, nurseries and packers in the provinces of Catamarca, Jujuy, Salta and Tucumán.
NS
Source: Clarin
