At a Kraft plant, former employees who had been laid off have been holding the plant hostage. Last month, Kraft announced layoffs that affected about 150 Argentine workers in the plant. Since then, many workers have refused to leave and they have also taken over a major freeway in the area.

Recently, Argentine police have fought back using rubber bullets and tear gas. The move was made after courts in the country ordered the action.

As of yet, no deaths have been reported. Kraft, the union and Argentina are trying to work together to solve this mess.

Kraft, which is based in Illinois, is one of the largest food and beverage companies on the planet. It has approximately 100,000 employees around the world.

Image: Zuma Press

Post from: EveryJoe

Kraft Layoffs Turn Ugly in Argentina

Gartner publishes a lot of interesting business research, mostly on topics revolving around IT. Take any IT business topic which I have looked for information on in the past 5 years and Gartner has published a white paper on it. Content management, customer relationship management, SAP, enterprise software, you name it, Gartner covers it.  My only problem is, they also charge for it. I only hear about Gartner reports when someone else quotes them, as did Cecilia Piaggio in an article about IT outsourcing in Argentina.

The article is full of interesting facts about doing business with Argentina. According to a popular saying, “Argentineans are Italians who speak Spanish but think they are English”. The country has the fastest growing economy in Latin America, close cultural proximity with the US and Europe and engineering wages significantly lower than in Hong Kong. Around 40,000 IT professionals work in the country; both Google and NEC have recently opened regional hubs in Argentina.

Unfortunately, Cecilia conceeds that engineering graduates from Argentina’s 50 universities cannot keep pace with demand. We all know what that means – expect salaries in Argentina to start rising.

The search for the next LCC continues…

Post from: EveryJoe

Looking for the next low cost country