They also simply lie.

We've lost count of all of them, but here are some of the bigger Nestlies Panjang workers and others have been told to swallow.

Lie number 1: In response to the union's 2007 request to bargain a new agreement including wages, they were told: nowhere does Nestlé negotiate wages; "remuneration is the prerogative of the employer and is based on individual performance" (from the minutes of the deadlocked April 2008 negotiations). The IUF produced collective bargaining agreements with other Nestle unions, agreements which include wage scales.

Lie Number 2: In 2009, unable to maintain the claim that Nestlé doesn't do wages, Nestlé 'conceded' that wages are part of collective bargaining, and agreed that it might be possible to negotiate them at Panjang. Fast forward to February, 2010, when the company agreed with the IUF to send a message to the Panjang union stating (among other things) "We take this opportunity to express our readiness to include wage negotiations in the CLA 2010-2011, and ask you, as the Union which is holding the majority representation, to start the process to negotiate the CLA [Collective Labour Agreement] 2010-2011."

That was in Switzerland. The letter which was sent to the union in Bahasa Indonesian omitted the key phrase "as the union which is holding the majority representation" - thereby opening the door to bringing a fake organization into dubious 'negotiations.'

Lie number 3: This year, when IUF members at Nestlé (again) wrote Nestlé corporate management that management 's anti-union practices at Panjang violated international labour standards and norms, and it was time to stop stalling and conniving and start genuine negotiations, the company brazenly asserted that "In no case has Nestlé Indonesia delayed, or tried to delay, the negotiations". As if 3 years of repression, chicanery and lies had never taken place!

Lie number 4: The same response being peddled to IUF members states that "The Swiss National Contact Point of the OECD has not found Nestlé Indonesia in contravention of its Guidelines." This is a lie, because the Swiss National Contact Point as a matter of policy never issues a formal statement as to whether the Guidelines have been violated or not. In accepting a submission, as they have done in the past in a number of cases concerning Nestlé submitted by the IUF, the NCP simply states that their agreement to become involved implies no judgement on whether the company has violated the Guidelines. When a 'final statement' is officially published by the NCP, this position is again restated – as a reminder of the procedural rules, not as a conclusion. In no sense can this can be construed as a statement vindicating management practices or absolving Nestlé. But this is not what Nestlé is telling people.

Nestlé are past masters of the technique of repeating something often enough in the hope that it will be accepted as true. This practice has recently been extended to issuing CSR reports which they claim to be in compliance with the requirements of the Global Reporting Initiative, falsely assigning their own reports a grade, and even hiring an outside agency to 'certify' its accuracy. As the IUF has shown, the exercise is entirely bogus and can't hold up to even casual scrutiny.

Those who work for the company measure what they say against what they do – the only standard we know.

Click here to send a message to Nestlé in support of the Panjang workers.

- Nestlé muss seiner besonderen Verantwortung als weltgrößter Lebensmittelkonzern gerecht werden und die Rechte der Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmer anerkennen.

- Die Betriebsräte verurteilen das Vorgehen von Nestlé und fordern die Unternehmungsleitung auf, endlich in wirkliche Lohnverhandlungen mit der SBNIP einzutreten.

- Die Werbung "Good Food, Good Life" muss auch für die Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter von Nestlé gelten - überall auf der Welt.

Die NGG unterstützt die Position der Betriebsrätinnen und Betriebsräte und macht deutlich, dass sozialverantwortliche Produktion und angemessene Arbeitsbedingungen bei einem Weltkonzern nicht in Ländergrenzen betrachtet werden müssen.
Nestlé hat eine Verantwortung in allen Fabriken.

Die NGG hat einen Aushang produziert, im dem auf die skandalösen Vorgängen in Indonesien hingewiesen wird. Er hängt jetzt in allen Nestlé-Betrieben aus.

- Nestlé must live up to its special responsibility as the world's largest food company and respect workers' rights.

- The works council delegates condemn the actions of Nestlé and call on management to engage in real wage negotiations with the SBNIP.

- The slogan "Good Food - Good Life" should also apply to Nestlé workers - all over the world.

The NGG expressed its support for the position of the works council delegates and stressed that, at a global corporation, socially responsible production and decent working conditions may not be viewed only within the lilmits of national boundaries.
Nestlé's responsibility extends to all factories.

The NGG has produced a leaflet which describes Nestlé's outrageous behaviour in Indonesia. It is now posted in all Nestlé worksites in Germany.

This penalty, however, seems a mere inconvenience to the company when compared to the severity and potential implications of the violations of the Conduct Adjustment Terms (TAC) agreement that regulates the length of the workday, as well as the working environment. The TAC was signed between Nestlé and its plants’ trade unions in 2007, with the Labor Ministry as guarantor to monitor compliance.

Nestlé has four plants in the city of Araras, an inland city of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, where it produces chocolate milk, yoghurt, Nescafé instant coffee, and other products. These factories had already become notorious through numerous reports of workers denouncing the excessive work pace they were forced to maintain.

The result of this extreme demand on its workers was an epidemic of cases of Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI), which was documented in the book “Silent Massacre: The Invisible Illness at Nestlé Araras”, published by IUF Latin America in 2004.

Now, four years later, Brazil’s Labor Ministry informs that through its inspections of the Nestlé plants the Labor Prosecutor’s Office found that “lack of breaks, excessive working hours, and pressure to work weekends and holidays” are the norm in these plants.

It also found that the world’s leading food producer had stopped replacing the old chairs used by the workers with proper seats, as required, and had failed to place safety protections on some of the machines.

In total, the inspection detected seven violations of the TAC, and levied a fine for each of those violations, for various amounts. In late May 2010, Nestlé agreed to pay the fines (which in all amount to US$ 320,000) through donations to several local health care institutions, and to the Labor Ministry.

For the workers of Nestlé Araras affected by RSI, the Labor Ministry’s decision represents an official acknowledgement of their denunciations and a vigorous denial of the cynical claims of the transnational corporation, which has systematically refused to assume any responsibility for the harm caused to the victims of its unchecked ambition.

For current Nestlé workers, this decision has served to ratify the terms of the TAC signed in 2007, and has enabled them to sign a new one, whereby Nestlé undertakes to refrain from forcing its employees to work on Saturdays and Sundays.

This is a new commitment that the transnational corporation takes on at a time in which its actions are publicly exposed, but past experience indicates that if the workers are not organized and alert, the company will not honor its commitment. So a strong presence of organized labor is necessary to closely monitor the company’s actions.

IUF Latin America will continue in its vigilant stance and will also monitor the situation, as Nestlé has a record of being one of the most anti-union companies in the world and one of the most likely to breach its agreements with trade unions.

Ministerio de Trabajo multa a Nestlé por exigir jornadas excesivas de labor

For an account of the cynical labor relations policy of a company that has become famous for its “Social Corporate Irresponsibility”, click here.

La dirección de la empresa se empeña en comunicarse con los trabajadores soslayando a la organización sindical, a través de los comunicados “Hola Nestlé” firmados por el gerente general y “Comunicación al colaborador” cuando son formulados por la gerencia de un departamento. A esta actitud, de por sí irritante, se le suman permanentes provocaciones a las cuales, más temprano que tarde, habrá que ponerle fin.

Pulse aquí para una crónica que pone de manifiesto la cínica política de relaciones laborales de una empresa que, con el paso de los años se ha convertido en un ejemplo de “Irresponsabilidad Social Corporativa”.

Ver también: Nestlé Perú se niega a un incremento salarial y rompe el trato directo con el sindicato.

See also: Nestlé Peru declares a pay freeze and breaks off direct dealings with the union.

We, the undersigned, participants in the Nestlé European Works Council, meeting in Geneva on June 1, 2010, are deeply angered to learn that management still denies the right of the Nestlé Indonesia Workers Union (SBNIP) at the Nescafé factory in Panjang, Indonesia, to negotiate their wages through collective bargaining after requesting this continuously since 2007. We are equally angry to learn that Nestlé will 'agree' to what is in fact a fundamental human right only on condition that an organization encouraged and supported by management, the Communication Forum of Nestlé Indonesia Workers (FKBNIP), participate in what would then cease to be genuine negotiations. We are angry to learn that after years of efforts by the SBNIP and a commitment by Nestlé to the IUF that wages would be bargained in good faith with the SBNIP, wages for 2010-2011 have again been imposed unilaterally by management.

Supporting a management-sponsored union in the workplace, discriminating against the SBNIP and its members, refusing to engage in good faith collective bargaining are all fundamental violations of international law and Conventions of the ILO. We call on you to ensure that all active support for the FKBNIP is immediately dropped, all harassment and discrimination against the SBNIP, its members and its officers comes to an end, and to take immediate measures to resolve the conflict by ensuring that Nestlé Indonesia management enters into direct good faith negotiations with the SBNIP for a new collective agreement which meets the union's legitimate demands.

After the Nestlé union representatives kicked off the meeting by conveying these very clear and concrete demands, Nestlé management representatives proceeded to business as usual: presentations containing little useful information, but with explicit messages concerning "challenges" to the business and implicit messages about the need for workers and their unions to be fully "aligned" (and the consequences when they aren't). The presentations included a sneak preview of Nestlé's new Corporate Business Principles, a document woefully lacking in substance, based on the assumption that the underlying policies are already well-established and can be downloaded from the Nestlé website.