VIDEO: Cosala miners accuse Canadian company of slavery

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The most serious thing is that there are many workers with blood lead and others possibly with cancer

Cosalá, Sinaloa.- Workers of the San Rafael mine, located in the Sierra de Cosalá, began an indefinite work stoppage to demand respect for the collective labor contract and to stop the abuses and harassment they receive as if they were slaves of the owners and Company managers

Yasser Beltrán, delegate of the Metallurgical Mining Union Zone, informed that since Sunday they decided to take this radical measure by closing the road and the site where minerals such as gold, silver, zinc, lead, copper, among other metals are extracted, leaving millions of profits to the company and that is not reflected in the economy of the families of the region.

Reunited the 223 employees, accused Minera Cosalá in a consortium that has been present in this area since 2003, in this period of time, to employed and hired directly and indirectly thousands of people born in the municipality with the Our Lady projects, El Cajoncito and today San Rafael, detonated the economy of the municipal seat with the opening of shops, hotels and recreational centers for the benefit of its inhabitants, but in exchange for dying buried by a landslide.

They commented that the injustices have always lived through them, but these were exacerbated two years ago by giving them an inhuman treatment in their personal safety, health, salaries, and working hours that sometimes exceed 12 hours with salaries ranging from 127 to 250 pesos per day. , depending on the area of ​​performance.

Yasser Beltrán, said the owners tried to buy it with the payment of 3 million dollars so that the back to the movement, and the answer was that the only negotiation is the welfare of the guild, otherwise, they will strike in the next days.

“They want to buy us, the last request they made was 3 million dollars for a server to go to Mazatlan and raise all this movement, because this is not money, it cannot be that in the year 2020 workers are enslaved,” he said.    

On the issue of health, they said that no one can get sick despite the fact that most miners have lead in their blood, that is, a high risk of getting cancer, and that can no longer be hidden from public opinion and Indifference of employers and the federal government that does not care about people’s lives and irreversible damage to flora and fauna.

Sergio Beltrán Reyes, Secretary of the Proceedings of the National Executive Committee of the Mining Union, requested the intervention of the Secretariats of Profepa, Semarnat and del Trabajó to take note of the ill-treatment of women and men who have suffered serious accidents with the mutilation of a part of their body and they have not had the support for their medical attention before the Mexican Social Security Institute and less to receive a decent pension, since they hired 4 external companies to discharge them with a salary of 543 pesos per month, also handling employer and tax worker fees with total impunity.

“By throwing the jales or waste in the process of metals they have no membrane, they have nothing to retain them, and all that contaminated water is leaking into the aquifers, there have been dead animals that hide so as not to pay their owners, and the danger that the meat has been commercialized among the inhabitants, but the most serious thing to many colleagues with blood lead and others possibly with cancer, ”he whined.  

Some workers took the opportunity to expose the conditions in which the mine operates, which has a depth of 2,000 meters and that daily go down with already obsolete safety equipment and about poor medical care.

“We have a social security that serves us only from 9:00 in the morning until 2:00 in the afternoon from Monday to Friday, therefore, you cannot get sick on weekends, and they do not make you valid the prescriptions with private doctors to pay for the medicine, and less as justification to absent you to work and you discount the day and the bonuses of productivity and punctuality ”.

“The only part that they do not sculpt us are the veins gentlemen and it is where we take the lead in the blood”.

“Lifting the unemployment is accepting to return to the grave and that means the crosses we have here back, for them we are dead and not worth it, and proof is the life insurance for 100 thousand pesos,” they said.

According to the owners’ data, every day they stop working, the company loses 150 thousand dollars, Yasser Beltrán said.

Finally, they admitted that they have received the visit of authorities of ecology and civil protection, but the employers order to hide all the old machinery and obsolete protection equipment they use, they also hide the employees who dare to report with the threat of running them if they speak , as they have done with several partners.

Source; linea directa

The Mazatlan Post