Dangers of subcontracting in Chile’s salmon farms.

Given the increase in salmon production in Chile through aquaculture, the demand for labor has increased, but most of the workers are subcontracted and this has led to greater labor precariousness.

Various organizations have denounced that subcontracted workers have working conditions inferior to those of the plant personnel of large salmon farming companies.

Currently there is an initiative called Fair Food, which includes a pilot program called Fair Fish that seeks to improve working conditions for those employed in the growing salmon industry. My colleague Gerardo Guzmán brings us this report on the subject.

Today, Chile is one of the world’s leading fishing countries and in recent years has positioned itself as the second largest producer of salmon globally.

Thanks to the Fair Fish pilot project, based on the innovative Fair Food program, which was created and implemented among farm workers in Florida, improving working conditions in the salmon industry is possible. Lucas Benitez is an advisor to this initiative and recognizes that one of the priorities is to eradicate subcontracting in Chile.

Among the first phases for implementation is the creation of what they call a code of conduct.

For Rosa Núñez this stage is what she is most excited about.

Because it is about establishing, together with the workers, the basis for equal rights:
Because one of the main salmon companies in Chile is already about to implement the pilot project, Núñez Aros is confident that the reality of salmon fishermen will soon improve and that Pescado Justo will spread within the fishing industry of the South American country.

FOR THE DISPATCH OF NOTICIERO LATINO REPORTED GERARDO GUZMAN

Remember that this dispatch is part of the “Cuando se Seca el Arroyo” Series, funded in part by The Walton Family Foundation.

However, as Rosa Núñez Aros, coordinator of the Fair Fish program in that country, explains, labor conditions in aquaculture, already hard, are worsening in that region due to subcontracting.

Lucas Benitez, co-founder of the Immokalee workers’ coalition, witnessed these problems.

A risk that runs through the entire production process from fishing to packaging…

Although there are regulations to protect workers, in practice they are not respected, Benítez describes what happens to the divers.