The bill has been rejected by ANAMURI because “it violates the workers rights”, said ANAMURI’s leader in an interview with Viviana Catrileo for Real World Radio.
The interview took place amid the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the National Day of the Agriculture Women Worker on August 25. The celebration took place in the country’s former National Congress in Santiago, Chile’s capital.

On July 24 ANAMURI and the Peasant Confederation Ranquil issued a press release to express their concern and rejection to the government’s urgency in passing a bill that creates the category of temporary rural worker.

Some of the issues included in the bill are linked with the working days and the term of the work contract for seasonal workers.

The bill “will hardly improve the working conditions of men and women in the sector, which are already precarious”, read the press release. The long working hours, the lack of power of the workers before the rural businessmen, the hours that women have to add to their housework, are especially worrying to the peasant organizations that consider the new bill does not properly answer these concerns.

ANAMURI has been in contact with a Parliament commission on labor that told them the agriculture businessmen and the workers represented in the Peasant and Ethnic Movement of Chile (MUCECH) agree and back the bill.

However, Arostica clarified that the rural workers’ unions have not participated in the agreement reached between the government, sectors of MUCECH and businessmen.

She explained that the movement does not represent the rural workers. “The organizations with representative trade unions are not part of the confederations gathered in MUCECH”, she said.

Photo: ANAMURI