In the predawn hours of Tuesday, the union representing the workers of Peru’s Backus & Johnston S.A. brewing corporation, the Sindicato Nacional de Obreros de Unión de CervercerÃas Peruanas de Backus y Johnston S.A., reached an agreement with the company after seventeen hours of negotiations.
The agreement came about a mere hour or so from the scheduled start of a company-wide strike. The union, also known as Sindicato Backus, for short, had already received strike authorization from Peru’s labor relations authority, the SUNAFIL.
With the new 3-year contract agreed to and signed-off on at 4:35 am of the 28th, the Sindicato Backus achieved pay increases of s/. 7.00, s/. 8.00 and s/. 8.50 -about $1.60 to $2.05 US, at today’s exchange rate- per diem, $/. 4.50 for those workers taking home less than s/. 80.00 soles per day, The workers also won a one-time signing bonus of s/. 3,000.00, a 65% subsidy of workers’ meals, overtime pay for malting plant workers, and the closing of benefit and pay gaps between different breweries, among other achievements.