Workers at the country's main poultry company have taken action over accumulated wage debts by the employer. Workers at the Granja Tres Arroyos plants in Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, and Concepción del Uruguay, Entre Ríos Province, held protests this week amid a crisis caused by the company's failure to pay salaries. In Concepción del Uruguay, where the company operates one of the country's largest plants, processing 200,000 chickens daily, it began paying wages in installments starting in September 2025. The conflict is also present at the plant in Pilar, where about 400 people are currently employed. Just ten days after the last demand, workers initiated a new protest action due to a recent delay in salary payments. From the Pinazo plant, located in La Lonja, workers denounced, in addition to non-compliance with wage payments, the lack of a clear payment schedule and accumulated debts for concepts such as overtime, vacations, and bonuses. The new strike is part of a labor crisis that has been deepening for several months at the Granja Tres Arroyos plant in Pilar. In previous demands, workers had already denounced the systematic payment of wages in installments, with delays in some cases exceeding several weeks, causing strong economic instability in households. According to employees, the fragmentation of wages became a recurring practice over the last year, accompanied by irregularities in the payment of bonuses, delays in vacations, and deductions applied during protest actions. "It's a lack of empathy, because you are working and fulfilling your obligations. They have already been warned that their leases will not be renewed because they are not solvent," they added. To this situation was added the non-payment of vacations for workers who took leave on December 15, 22, and 29, some of whom have already returned to their duties without having received those benefits. Salazar also warned about the non-deposit of child support payments. About 1,000 workers are employed at the plant, who express being in deep economic and labor uncertainty and are maintaining protest actions. Currently, the conflict lies in the non-compliance with a previously agreed-upon payment schedule with the company. "They deduct us for child support, which is the money for our children, but they do not deposit it in the corresponding judicial account," he stated. Miguel Klenner, secretary of the Food Workers' Union of Concepción del Uruguay, stated in an interview with FM Sapukay: "There are comrades who at this moment have a bottle of water in the fridge, their card has been cut off for non-payment." "We found this year that they had only paid half of the first half of December and half of the bonus," reported delegate Maximiliano Salazar to the Entrerriano portal ElOnce. According to him, as of Tuesday, the full half of the month's wages nor the remaining 50% of the bonus for 2025 had been paid. "What we are demanding is what was worked, what was sold," he said. Finally, Klenner emphasized: "For the holidays, these boys sold chicken, imagine, who didn't eat chicken roll at the party? They also warned of a sustained loss of purchasing power and growing difficulty in covering basic expenses in an inflationary context. To this scenario was added a significant reduction in personnel at the Pilar plant, where the workforce has reportedly decreased in recent months, increasing the workload for those who remain in their posts and fueling concern about possible further cuts. Preventive Crisis Procedure to adjust workers The plants in Pilar and Concepción del Uruguay are part of a network of establishments that the company has in various Argentine provinces, as well as operations in the Oriental Republic of Uruguay. The conflict denounced by the workers of these two plants is framed in a broader situation that Granja Tres Arroyos, the country's main poultry producer, is going through. The company obtained government authorization to initiate a Preventive Crisis Procedure, with the aim of reducing costs in an economic context that the firm considers unfavorable, particularly due to the level of the exchange rate for exports. In this context, the company requested the possibility of proceeding with layoffs or applying cuts in additional salary payments from the Secretariat of Labor, which deepened the concern among workers.
