Unions want government support in Americanas crisis

The largest trade union centrals in the country released a joint statement this Monday (30) defending the direct participation of the Ministry of Labor in Americanas’ judicial recovery process, which took place after the revelation at the beginning of the month of at least R$ 20 billion in accounting problems .

In a meeting with unions, the Minister of Labor, Luiz Marinho, said that “apparently, there may have been corporate irresponsibility” in the Americanas crisis, but stated that “it is essential that we manage to preserve the continuity of economic activity at Lojas Americanas, regardless of whose controller it is”.

Americanas has among its main shareholders the billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Carlos Sicupira and Marcel Telles.

Eight trade union entities, including CUT, Força Sindical, UGT, signed the request presented to the minister this Monday. The centrals want to preserve jobs at the retailer, which has more than 44,000 workers, in addition to “hundreds of thousands” in the supplier network.

“For these reasons, the centrals asked the Minister of Labor and Employment that the government participate directly in the process with the objective of establishing a tripartite dialogue and total transparency, in what is one of the greatest business recovery processes in the country”, stated the entities.

The minister stated that he met with the trade union centrals to hear the workers’ demands and stated that the government “does not have a solution to present to you (workers) but we want to think together with you”.

“BIRDS OF PREY”

Marinho stated that the Americanas crisis “also concerns the economic area of ​​the government…But the problems of the banks cannot be greater than the problems related to work and employment, with thousands of people and families that could be affected by this impact” , said.

“It is necessary to find a way to make the shareholders responsible, who must have been ready to make this hole”, said the minister, hoping that Americanas’ problems are limited to the retailer and not to the sector as a whole.

“It seems that it is an isolated issue for Lojas Americanas that must have had some bird of prey that found a loophole to do something… and to become more billionaires than they already were”, said Marinho without naming names. “Certainly the supervisory bodies… CVM… it is necessary to observe whether there has been fraud.”

The centrals convened an event for Friday in Rio de Janeiro to draw attention to the situation of workers at the retail chain, which filed for judicial recovery under the burden of more than R$ 40 billion in debt.