News

Citing a series of “series labour relations breaches” by Prosegur managers in Peru, the Peruvian Ministry of Labour issued a decision against the company in March 2014, which includes fines in the amount of 74,777 soles (USD 26,549).  The following are the issues for which the company was cited:

• Acts of hostility towards union leaders
• Denying union leave required by Peruvian law
• Utilizing temporary contracts for 28 workers that should have been provided permanent contracts
• Not having an attendance register (impacting compensation)
• Obstructing labour inspectors seeking to enforce the law
• Failing to appear at the Ministry on two occasions

The Ministry of Labour also imposed a fine of 37,000 soles (USD 13,000) in the same month for health and safety violations pertaining to workers at 4 hospitals in Peru.  These violations included:

• Failure to provide protective masks to all staff who require them
• Lack of health and safety training
• Failure to maintain an adequate accident register
• Not providing lockers for all staff
• Failure to have a functioning health and safety committee at the time of inspection

These violations of workers’ rights are yet another example of human rights and labour violations by Prosegur.  The company, headquartered in Spain, is facing an OECD complaint filed by UNI in November 2013, focusing on violations by their country operations in Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru.  The headquarters office’s position, when directly confronted about these abuses, either denies facts which are documented by courts of law, tries to justify lawless behaviour of its country managers by saying that it has a “decentralized” labour relations policy globally or just ignores court and agency decisions, apparently believing that it is exempt from the “rule of law”. 

This renegade corporate behavior does not, of course, meet any acceptable standards for responsible corporate behaviour – whether under the OECD, the ILO, the Global Compact or any other international labour standard. 

Prosegur is the 3rd largest private security company in the world and it has an obligation to monitor and ameliorate abuses in its “supply chain” just as all other private security companies must do. 

Signing a Global Agreement with UNI would go a long way toward resolving these problems but Prosegur adamantly refuses to enter into any dialogue around this issue – because Prosegur knows that with a Global Agreement comes accountability, something they work very hard to avoid!