#ENDCUBAEMBARGO

Cuba rolls out two Covid-19 vaccines still in clinical trials

Issued on: 13/05/2021 - 

Faced with a surge in coronavirus cases, Cuba this week started immunizing members of the public, using two locally-produced vaccines that have yet to complete clinical trials.

The island nation of 11.2 million inhabitants recorded 1,207 new daily cases on Wednesday—a near record for Cuba—as inhabitants of Havana and other provinces received their first dose of Abdala, one of two candidate shots in Phase II trials.

“A slight sensation of warmth during the injection” but “all is well,” Cecilia Reyes, 69, one of the first Abdala recipients, said of the experience.

The rollout began with the blessing of the health ministry as authorities eye official approval of the Abdala and Soberana 2 vaccines by Cuba’s drug authority by June.

The communist state, which has stated it wants to vaccinate all inhabitants this year, has been relatively unscathed by the Covid-19 pandemic, with over 119,000 reported cases and 768 deaths to date.

Under American sanctions, Cuba has a long tradition of making its own vaccines, dating back to the 1980s.

Nearly 80 percent of its vaccines are produced locally, and Cuba is working on five coronavirus candidate vaccines. If one of them gets the green light, it will be the first coronavirus vaccine developed in Latin America.

>> Cuba may soon become smallest country to develop its own Covid-19 jabs

Cuba has not bought or sought coronavirus vaccines from elsewhere.

In March, the country started vaccinating health care workers with Abdala and Soberana 2.

Abdala has completed its Phase III trial, but the results are still being analyzed. Soberana 2 is due to complete the final trial phase within days.

Phase II results, the authorities say, showed positive results in terms of efficacy and safety.

Initially, the government had planned to roll out its vaccine program to the public in June, after authorization.

“If it were not for this epidemical situation, (the authorities) would have waited longer,” said molecular biologist and researcher Amilcar Perez-Riverol of the Sao Paulo University, referring to the new infection surge.

Health Minister Jose Angel Portal said between 1.7 million of the 2.1 million inhabitants of Havana, the epicenter of the outbreak, will be vaccinated between now and August.

Of the island’s total population, 22.6 percent should have received both shots by June, 33.5 percent by July, and 70 percent by August, he said.

Any criticism of Cuba’s decision to jump the gun will become moot if the trial results come back positive, said Perez-Riverol, pointing to Russia and China which had also put home-made vaccines to use before trials were completed.

(AFP)

ZOMBIE MINKS

Denmark incinerates minks culled over virus fears
In one grim turn of events, one mass grave saw dead minks that had been buried too shallow rising out of the ground.

Issued on: 13/05/2021 

All 15 million of Denmark's minks were killed after it emerged they carried a virus strain that experts feared could avert vaccines Mikkel Berg Pedersen Ritzau Scanpix/Scanpix

Copenhagen (AFP)

Denmark on Thursday kicked off the grisly task of unearthing and incinerating minks that were hastily buried after a mass culling sparked by fears of a mutated coronavirus strain, authorities said.

All 15 million of Denmark's minks were killed last year after it emerged they were carrying a virus strain that experts feared could avert vaccines.

Some were buried in November in two mass graves in west Denmark, sparking fears that their decomposing carcasses could pollute surrounding areas.

The government called on them to be dug up and incinerated once the risk of contagion had subsided.

On Thursday, teams started digging up some of the 13,000 tonnes (29 million pounds) of mink carcasses due to be unearthed, which were then transported to the nearby Maabjerg Energy Center (MEC) for incineration.

"I am relieved to see how the whole thing is going according to plan," agriculture minister Rasmus Prehn said in a post to Twitter.

The MEC warned that a foul odour from the carcasses may emanate in the area as they are transported and unloaded, but that burning them at a high temperature should eliminate the smell once they reach the incinerators.

Denmark was the world's largest exporter of mink fur before it culled its entire mink population last year after some were found to be carrying a mutated coronavirus variant.

Health authorities worried that vaccines may not work against the so-called Cluster 5 variant, which was declared wiped out in November.

The government banned mink breeding until January 2022, but it has come under fire for its culling program.

Once the mass gassing programme had already begun, a court challenge to the order found that the executive's decision had no legal basis, leading to the resignation of the previous agriculture minister.

Adding to the scandal, it was later revealed that the disposal of the dead animals could cause phosphorus and nitrogen to be released into the soil surrounding mass graves due to the decomposition process.

In one grim turn of events, one mass grave saw dead minks that had been buried too shallow rising out of the ground.

Mink are the only animal confirmed to be capable both of contracting the strain and of passing it to humans.

A NONTRANSPHOBIC POLITICIAN
'Enormous privilege': 23-year-old nonbinary mayor takes office in historic first

Jo Yurcaba 
NBC 12/5/2021

Owen Hurcum took office Monday as the world’s first known nonbinary mayor.

16 AND 17 YEAR OLDS ARE NOW ALLOWED TO VOTE IN WALES

© Provided by NBC News

Hurcum, 23, is genderqueer and agender, and was elected unanimously last year by the City Council in Bangor, Wales, after serving as deputy mayor for a year, North Wales Live reported. Hurcum, who uses gender neutral pronouns, didn’t take office until Monday due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hurcum shared a photo Monday wearing a traditional mayoral chain, and thanked the city.

“It is an enormous privilege to have been elected by my fellow City Council members to the office of Mayor of Bangor,” Hurcum said in a statement to NBC News. “I don't take this lightly and I will work as hard as I can in the role to give back everything to the City that has given me so much. I might only be 23 but I have a wealth of experience at local government and a fantastic team behind me so I know we are set up to face the challenges ahead.”

Hurcum added that representation “is more than just putting on the chain, but I'm glad to have received thousands of positive messages from Non-Binary people the world over saying what it means to see me in this role.”

Hurcum told North Wales Live they moved to Bangor, which has a population of about 18,000, about five years ago to attend Bangor University.

"Within a week, I fell in love with it and tried to throw myself into the city's culture,” they said last year.

Hurcum became interested in politics while attending university, North Wales Live reported. Prior to becoming deputy mayor, they served as a city councilor for four years.

Hurcum also ran for Senedd, the Welsh Parliament, in the spring, but stepped down in March, saying the Welsh Plaid Cymru party * for which they were running provides a platform for those who promote transphobia.

*IT IS A WELSH INDEPENDENCE PARTY

They specifically called out Senedd member Helen Mary Jones, who has described herself as a “gender-critical feminist,” according to the BBC. Hurcum said Jones retweeted “transphobic” Twitter accounts that have sent them “verbally abusive” messages.

“She has made no effort to learn about our community and why her retweets are so damaging,” Hurcum wrote on Twitter in March.

A few days later, Jones issued an apology and closed her Twitter account, the BBC reported.

"I specifically recognize that some of the accounts I follow and retweet have shared content which is unacceptable and transphobic and I very much regret the impact of this on individuals as well as the trans community more broadly," she said in a statement. “None more so than the trans community. For this, I sincerely apologize to the trans community for the pain and hurt I have caused. I am still learning."

In a response at the time, Hurcum welcomed the apology, but told NBC News the Plaid Cymru party is “still a ways away from winning mine and our communities’ trust back.”

Hurcum joins the growing list of transgender and nonbinary elected officials worldwide. In 1999, New Zealand elected Georgina Beyer, the world’s first trans member of parliament. Tony Briffa became Australia’s first openly intersex mayor in 2011.

More recently, Oklahoma state Rep. Mauree Turner became the first publicly nonbinary U.S. state representative in 2020. Three years prior, Danica Roem became the first openly trans person elected to a U.S. state house.

Hurcum wrote on Twitter that they’ll “be wanting to use my term to promote Bangor as much as I can, bring in investment and interest and celebrate the multi cultural community that makes our city the greatness that it is.”

They previously told North Wales Live that they also want to sell Bangor as a destination.

“I really want to work on bringing more funds to improve the high street, push for more green spaces and promote the interconnected communities between the university and the city itself,” they said.

Study suggests neonic pesticides harming monarch butterfly eggs

A recently published study suggests that one of the world's most common pesticides may be contributing to the decline of one of its most-loved butterflies.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

University of Guelph researcher Ryan Norris conducted one of the first real-world studies on monarch butterflies and so-called neonic pesticides. He says the chemical seems to reduce the number of eggs that successfully hatch.

"It's the first field evidence that neonics can have a negative impact on larval survival of monarchs," Norris said in an interview Wednesday.

Monarchs undergo one of nature's most remarkable migrations, fluttering all the way from Canada to Mexico and back. But their numbers have declined more that 80 per cent over the last two decades and scientists are trying to find out why.

Neonicotinoid pesticides are widely applied to common crops such as corn and often drift onto other plants, including milkweed, which monarchs depend on for nesting and food. Monarchs actually prefer milkweed growing alongside or within cultivated fields, Norris said.

"We don't know why. But that's where they get hit the hardest (with neonics)."

The research, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, involved Norris and his colleagues working with a farmer near Halton, Ont. The farmer planted one half of a small plot with corn seed that had only been treated with a fungicide and the other half with corn that had been coated with clothianidin, a common neonic.

Milkweed was deliberately planted along with the corn to attract monarchs.

Over two years, the scientists found that monarch eggs on the neonic plot had a three per cent less chance of successfully hatching. It sounds small, said Norris, but with the large number of eggs monarchs lay, it adds up to big numbers.

"(That) could easily mean millions of larvae that are dying each year because of the neonics."

Neonics are increasingly implicated in plummeting numbers of pollinators such as bees. The chemicals are banned in the European Union and in some U.S. states.

In 2018, Health Canada proposed to tightly restrict the use of neonics, including a ban on all outdoor applications of clothianidin. It is currently re-evaluating that stance and is expected to announce an updated decision next spring.

Millions of monarchs migrate each winter to a small area of mountaintop forest in central Mexico, where scientists estimate their population by measuring the area of trees turned orange by the clustering butterflies. That area has shrunk to just over two hectares, down 26 per cent from last year, says the Centre for Biological Diversity.

Monarchs are considered a species of special concern in both Canada and Mexico.

The black-and-orange butterflies face many threats other than pesticides, Norris said, but pesticides seem to be part of the problem.

"This is yet another piece of evidence of how neonics can influence the biodiversity on our landscape," he said. "They are having a serious negative impact."

Although monarchs aren't important pollinators, that's not the only measure of a species' value, Norris suggested.

"Monarchs, in many people's minds, represent butterflies," he said. "When they think butterflies, they think monarchs.

"They serve a really important role as a connection for people to butterflies and to nature."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 13, 2021.

Quebec's location and energy alternatives give it options if Line 5 closes: expert

QUEBEC — While political and business leaders across the country scramble to avoid a shutdown of Enbridge Inc.'s Line 5 pipeline, Quebec could be spared the most serious consequences if the oil stops flowing.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, backed by environmentalists and Indigenous groups, says the pipeline that runs under Lake Huron and Lake Michigan is vulnerable to a catastrophic spill. She ordered the critical piece of energy infrastructure closed by May 12.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan said in a recent statement “Line 5 does not just affect one province or one region — it supports our entire country."

The Canadian government has filed a brief in connection with the legal dispute between Michigan and Enbridge. The Canadian and U.S. chambers of commerce have also joined forces with their counterparts in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin by filing a joint brief in court arguing against Whitmer's bid to shut down the cross-border pipeline.

"It remains the safest, most efficient way to transport fuel to refineries and markets and is a reliable source of energy for Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ontario and Quebec," O'Regan said, adding that close to half of Quebec’s fuel supply derives from that pipeline.

But Suncor's refinery in Montreal and Valero's refinery in Lévis, Que., south of Quebec City, say they have contingency plans in place. And Pierre-Olivier Pineau, chair in energy sector management at HEC business school in Montreal, says Quebecers wouldn’t be seriously impacted if Line 5 were to close.

“If there’s such a strong political reaction in Canada, it’s because to the contrary of Quebec, other provinces don’t have options,” Pineau said.

Shutting down Line 5, Pineau explained, would be like going back in time. In 2015, before Enbridge received the authorization to operate their pipeline in Quebec, Valero and Suncor received crude oil by boat, rail or from the pipeline between Portland, Maine, and Montreal.

If Line 5 is closed, then Quebec's refineries could be served by those three other options, he said.

Suncor and Valero didn't want to give details about where they would look to fill the gap left by Line 5. Marina Binotto, spokeswoman for Valero, says the location of Lévis’s refinery along the St. Lawrence River is key when it comes to diversifying fuel suppliers.

“We have access to a deepwater port, allowing us to be supplied by ships,” Binotto said. “It is always desirable to have flexibility in our sources and ways of supply.”

Sneh Seetal, a spokeswoman for Suncor, said the company and its refinery in Montreal "have contingency plans in place, but as it’s commercially sensitive, I can’t provide specifics." But she added that places such as Eastern Canada, Michigan and neighbouring states might have to import refined fuel products to fill any gaps and "this will come at a cost."

Quebec Energy Minister Jonatan Julien said in a statement on Tuesday the pipeline is a “crucial infrastructure” for the province and the government is in favour of keeping Line 5 in operation. Julien, however, also said Quebec “continues efforts to ensure the diversification of our sources of energy."

Michigan's governor and Enbridge have agreed to mediation sessions but Enbridge won’t budge. The company says it won’t cease operations unless ordered by a court, arguing that the pipeline is running safely and reliably.

An expert who studies the Great Lakes region disagrees.

David Schwab, a research oceanographer at Michigan Technological University, has been studying the Great Lakes for the past 45 years. He pointed to a 2013 investigation by the National Wildlife Federation, which revealed that the 68-year-old pipeline, which runs beneath the Straits of Mackinac and carries 540,000 barrels per day of propane and crude oil, was unsupported and vulnerable to strong water currents.

“What happened is over time, the sand, mud and certain sections of the pipeline have been washed away,” Schwab said in a recent interview. “If we were to try and build that pipeline today, would it even be allowed?”

Schwab argues that the aging pipeline is a catastrophe waiting to happen if nothing is done. The researcher conducted more than 800 simulated spills in 2016, which he said indicated that depending on weather conditions and currents, the oil could reach Canadian shores.

“The Straits of Mackinac is the worst place in the Great Lakes to have an oil spill,” Schwab said. “There are so many different places that the oil could go. It could go anywhere!”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on May 12, 2021.

— with files from The Associated Press.

Virginie Ann, The Canadian Press

Pandemic review panel concludes COVID-19 was preventable

https://wus-streaming-video-msn-com.akamaized.net/190e5524-9186-4f7a-b6e1-c84e97f21fcb/7b676dff-7d59-4dff-bafc-45e5c251_2250.mp4
Duration: 06:22

In an exclusive interview, former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark tells Power & Politics the COVID-19 could have been prevented had world leaders and the WHO acted faster to contain the spread of the virus.

CBC.COM

Elon Musk's U-turn on bitcoin hits Tesla and other crypto-linked stocks as hundreds of billions get wiped off the digital assets market
snagarajan@businessinsider.com (Shalini Nagarajan) 4 hrs ago

 Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. Joe Skipper/Reuters

Elon Musk's turnaround on bitcoin sent Tesla and other crypto-linked stocks lower on Thursday.

Crypto mining stocks like Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital fell 13%.

The entire cryptocurrency market lost as much as $365 billion in value at one point on Thursday.

Stocks linked to cryptocurrencies slumped on Thursday after Elon Musk's sudden change of mind on bitcoin sent the popular digital asset 15% lower.

Tesla suspended vehicle purchases through bitcoin and will instead explore other digital currencies that are less energy-intensive, Musk announced Wednesday.

The entire cryptocurrency market shed around $365 billion to about $2.06 trillion as bitcoin, Ethereum's ether and Ripple's XRP fell sharply. The market recovered some losses later in the day as the value of combined digital assets rose to about $2.24 trillion.

Tesla's realization that bitcoin could be increasingly environmentally-damaging sent its shares 2.7% lower in Thursday's pre-market trading.

© @elonmusk/Twitter @elonmusk/Twitter

Major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, which just went public last month, fell 5%. MicroStrategy, which holds around 90,000 bitcoins, plunged 10%, while Jack Dorsey's payments firm Square fell 2%.

Crypto-mining stocks were badly hurt too. Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital Holdings fell 13%, while BitDigital fell 6%

.

Bitcoin mining is hugely energy intensive, requiring vast amounts of computing power. Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

"All of a sudden, he's not so keen due to environmental concerns," Nigel Green, chief executive of investment firm deVere Group, said, and questioned why Musk didn't do more homework before Tesla invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin.

"Musk likes being known as a contrarian. He likes to go against the crowd in a high-profile way. Is his waning interest in bitcoin at a time when huge amounts of institutional investment from major Wall Street banks is pouring in, part of this?" Green said.

Musk's move to accept bitcoin payments for Tesla was one of the most legitimate catalysts for the cryptocurrency's rally this year. He recently tweeted a poll asking followers whether his EV-maker should accept payment in dogecoin. Although he has been a vocal advocate of cryptocurrencies, he has warned investors to be cautious.

"In any event, the more Musk and others mainstream Doge and other crypto, the more it will appreciate and the less crypto traders will want to use it as a means of payment, as opposed to a store of value," Eric Berman, senior legal editor of US Finance at Thomson Reuters Practical Law, said. "Financially, it would be like paying for goods and services with gold or oil - though slightly less cumbersome."
Read the original article on Business Insider

CRA's new audits on large corporations dropped significantly in years leading up to COVID-19 pandemic

OTTAWA – The number of audits launched by Canada Revenue Agency on large corporations dropped by over 30 per cent in the four years preceding the pandemic, much to the surprise of the NDP and tax experts.

CRA PUT THAT TIME AND EFFORT INTO TRACKING DOWN WAITERESSES FOR CHEATING ON REPORTING THEIR TIPS

“I’m disappointed,” said Toby Sanger of advocacy group Canadians for Tax Fairness. “We’ve been told for years and years that they’re focusing more in this area, but we haven’t seen all that much to show for it yet.”

According to documents tabled at the House of Commons at the NDP’s request, the number of new audits opened yearly by the CRA on large corporations dropped by nearly two thousand between 2016-2017 (6,281) and 2019-2020 (4,257).

The data also show that the number of large company audits that led to a tax reassessment worth more than $0 — in other words, audits that led to CRA claiming unpaid taxes — dropped very sharply from 5,127 to 2,059 during the same period.

In a statement, the agency said it was refocusing its audit targets from quantity to quality by focusing on the “big fish” and the suspected worst offenders, which generally takes longer but brings in more unpaid tax dollars in the end.

“We are performing fewer audits, but the audits that we are doing are producing greater results,” CRA spokesperson Etienne Biram said in a statement. The agency was not able to provide a breakdown of the average tax claim per audit over the years by deadline.

© Provided by National Post Data submitted by the CRA showed that of 30,000 audits on large companies launched since late 2015, only 18 were turned over to the CRA’s criminal investigations division.

CRA claiming $4.4B from Canadian companies and individuals suspected of tax evasion

The CRA is watching you: Auditors scouring social media for unreported income from influencers

But the new data shocked MP Matthew Green as well as tax experts consulted by the National Post, who did not expect to see the number of large company audits drop so significantly.

“I feel like the CRA has recognized that the bigger the fish they go after, the more resources these companies have to fight back. And it feels like they’ve just given up on fighting that fight when they can instead go after small business owners,” Green said in an interview.

In its most recent tax gap study, in which the CRA assessed how much tax revenue wasn’t declared to the government in a single year, the agency found that Canadian corporations were by far the largest contributors to the gap in 2014, with up to $11.4 billion in unpaid taxes.

Of that amount, big companies were the largest portion, having avoided paying between $6.7 billion and $7.9 billion.

“CRA’s own tax gap showed that it was larger businesses that are more likely to be dodging taxes in different ways, way more likely than small businesses. And they’ve talked a lot about doing this, but we haven’t seen much action on it at all,” Sanger said.

But CRA says that better data and analytics are allowing it to better target bigger tax evaders instead of having to cast a larger net in the hopes of catching major offenders.

“Our compliance programs are focusing on taxpayers who are most likely to not comply with their tax obligations. As we refine our tactics to focus on these taxpayers, it makes sense that the number of audits, as a whole, that are being performed will decrease,” Biram explained.

“We are focusing our audits on the segments of the population who often have complex tax arrangements resulting in lengthy and time consuming information gathering processes during the course of the audits,” he continued, adding that wealthy corporations are also more likely to “fight the CRA through increased litigation.”

The data submitted by CRA also showed that of the nearly 30,000 audits on large companies launched since November 2015, only 18 were turned over to the CRA’s criminal investigations division.

Since then, half the investigations have been abandoned and of the rest, only one has been referred to prosecutors.

“Whether or not a referral is accepted for criminal tax investigation is based on many factors, including the availability of evidence and the likelihood of a prosecution. Given that the standard of proof in criminal matters is ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ the evidentiary burden is very high in the criminal prosecution context,” Biram explained.

Denis Meunier, a former director general of CRA’s criminal investigations and compliance program division, said he’s cautiously happy to hear that the agency is focusing on big fish audits, though he wants to see proof that the efforts are in fact leading to more unpaid taxes being collected.

But he’s concerned by the fact that such a small number of large corporation audits end up on prosecutors’ desks and thinks there needs to be an independent review of CRA’s internal processes to understand why.

“Those numbers are very, very … I wouldn’t say troubling, but they raise a lot of questions about the process that leads to so few investigations,” Meunier said. “In my view, they need to do a review of what’s preventing higher level of deterrence through criminal investigations.”

• Email: cnardi@postmedia.com | Twitter: ChrisGNardi

In a report suppressed under Trump, the EPA has said for the first time that humans caused the climate crisis

mguenot@businessinsider.com (Marianne Guenot) 

Climate change protesters disrupt then-candidate Joe Biden's campaign event on October 9, 2019. Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images

The EPA published an update of indicators tracking the climate crisis on Wednesday.

The report had long been annual, but was not published at all during the Trump administration.

For the first time, the EPA attributed climate change to humans, a press officer told the BBC.

For the first time, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said that the climate crisis is - at least in part - caused by human activities, the BBC reported.

The agency had never before said that human activities caused the changes in the Earth's climate, a press officer for the EPA told the BBC.

The acknowledgement came in the latest update of the EPA's Climate Change Indicators, which was published on Wednesday.

Climate Change Indicators used to come out every year, but stopped publishing in early 2017, just as President Donald Trump took office. Its work recommenced after Joe Biden took office earlier this year.

"Greenhouse gases from human activities are the most significant driver of observed climate change," the EPA said in the report.

Over the course of his presidency, Trump made conflicting statements about his position on the climate crisis. In 2020, he walked back his position that it was "hoax", but also predicted that the climate "will change back" without intervention.

The report presents "compelling and clear evidence" of a climate crisis, the EPA said in a press release.

"There is no small town, big city, or rural community that's unaffected by the climate crisis," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said on Wednesday.

Here are some findings from the report:

Heat waves are happening more often in US cities, from two per year in the 1960s to six per year in the 2010s.

Sea levels have risen along US coastlines since 1960, especially around the

 mid-Atlantic coast and parts of the Gulf Coast, where some stations measured 8 inch rises.

The growing season in agriculture has become longer, by an extra 2 weeks on average.

Read the original article on Business Insider

PROFILE: Industrial Chile Constramet’s leading role in the process of drafting a new Constitution



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11 May, 2021Industrial Chile-Constramet celebrated 40 years of defending workers’ rights in December last year. The union is currently playing a leading role in a historic moment for Chile; the process of drafting a new Constitution.


PROFILE

From Global Worker No. 1 May 2021


Country: Chile

Union: Constramet


Industrial Chile-Constramet celebrated 40 years of defending workers’ rights in December last year. The union is currently playing a leading role in a historic moment for Chile; the process of drafting a new Constitution.

Although Industrial Chile-Constramet was founded in 1929, the union was declared illegal in 1973 during the dictatorship. In 1980, the dictatorship decree was reversed, and the union became legal again.

On 18 October 2020, an increase in Santiago’s subway fares triggered historic protests. The social outburst brought attention to feelings of injustice due to Chile’s growing inequality.

Protesters called for an increased minimum wage, changes in education and rejected high electricity and gas rates, gasoline prices, and health care costs. A change to the Constitution was proposed, that would guarantee social justice and provide solutions to the deep-rooted issues affecting society.

In a referendum on 25 October last year, Chileans voted in favour of drafting a new Constitution to replace the one in force since Pinochet’s dictatorship.

Industrial Chile-Constramet has been engaged in promoting the approval of the referendum and are also willing to be part of the process of drafting the country’s new Constitution. A new Constitution should be ready to be put to a referendum by April 2022, which Chileans will then approve or reject.



Industrial Chile-Constramet president and member of IndustriALL’s executive committee, Horacio Fuentes, says:


“In 2021, we have the challenge of continuing to fight for the transformations demanded by the people of Chile. For this reason, we are playing a leading role in the constituent process, which is the door to a dignified and fair Chile for all.”

The union leader says that the union will present proposals for “A new development model for Chile,” to be delivered to those elected to work on the new Constitution.

“We have prepared a document saying that the new Constitution must establish labour rights and a new development model. It should help to create a national industry associated with our natural resources that is able to achieve greater industrial development in Chile. The new Constitution has to change the country’s destiny,” says Fuentes.

The union brings together 8,000 workers from the manufacturing industry, including the leather sector, footwear, textile, forestry, metal, plastic, mining, chemical and energy sectors, regardless of the type of contract they have. A third of the members are women; the union’s goal is to increase the number to at least 50 per cent.



Fuentes explains that incorporating more young workers and women is a challenge. Industrial Chile-Constramet has established a secretariat for youth and one for women to train and encourage them to join governing bodies. However, finding young people who are committed to the union, where the collective interest takes priority over the individual, is difficult.

OBU OF ALL PROLETARIANS 

A SOCIAL UNION FOR ALL

“We need to be the kind of organization that workers want and not only the one that the law creates. This implies moving beyond company unions and instead appeal to creating of large national union,” says Fuentes.

SOLIDARITY UNIONISM