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The law does not improve the economic situation of Peruvian farmers, who work in the countryside for over eight hours a day for less than US$11.2.
Peruvian workers Sunday called the new agricultural bill, which is to be approved by the Congress next week, a mockery against the working class.
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The new norm, endorsed by Peruvian Congress' Economics Committee on Sunday, assigns farmers the official minimum wage and a 20 percent bonus. This salary represents a lower monthly income than they previously had.
"The text is an insult to the sector's workers. It harms us, instead of improving our economic situation," Agricultural Workers National Federation's Secretary Juan Herrera said.
In Peru, farmers work in the countryside for over eight hours a day, relentlessly, and for less than US$11.2, according to local outlets.
Farmworkers throw rocks at police trying to remove them from the Pan-American South Highway as they protest the Agricultural Promotion Law in the Barrio Chino neighborhood of Peru's Ica province
— Pixiedust (@PixiedustJtT) December 23, 2020
Credit: AP Photo/Luis Campos pic.twitter.com/CUlPB86grB
The new law also states that workers in public agricultural export companies will receive half the salary that workers in private companies will get.
"It is unacceptable that the government will leave farmers aside to make private companies prosperous,'" the member of the Agro-export Workers' Struggle Committee of Ica Department, Susan Quintanillla, condemned.
In the first days of December, farmers blocked the country's main highways to demand the repeal of the Agrarian Promotion Law that came into effect in 2000.
On December 5, Congress repealed the law, two days after an agricultural worker was killed amid clashes between riot police and hundreds of protesters.
Every McDonald's in #Peru closes amid protests at death of two workers and stoke anger over working conditions, which are viewed as exploitative and dangerous. #McDonaldsNuncaMas pic.twitter.com/wbxQcfeXvI
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) December 20, 2019
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