Union workers at Audi’s plant in Puebla went on strike Wednesday after the carmaker rejected their request for a 15.5% pay raise.
The Audi workers union, called Sitaudi, said that more than 4,000 unionized employees would stop work until an agreement with the carmaker is reached.
According to a Reuters report, some 1,000 workers protested Wednesday morning outside the plant, which is located about 60 kilometers northeast of Puebla city in the municipality of San José Chiapa.
“We are workers, not beggars,” they chanted.
Audi said that Sitaudi rejected its offer of a 6.5% pay increase and asked for a 15.5% hike.
The carmaker, a subsidiary of Germany’s Volkswagen, said it was open to dialogue, but described a 15.5% increase as “beyond any comparative parameter.”
Audi and Sitaudi reached an agreement for a 9.4% pay raise in January 2023, which Reuters said was “one of the highest automaker wage hikes in Mexico in recent years.”
Sitaudi general secretary César Orta said that the union would “continue negotiating and … bring agreements to consultation only when we consider that they really dignify workers.”
The strike is the first at the Audi plant in Puebla, which opened in 2016, and the first automotive sector strike during the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in late 2018.
With reports from El Financiero, Reuters and El Economista
Lessee here: a 9.4 increase last January and a 15.5% increase now for a total increase of 24.9% in 13 months? I. Don’t. Think. So.