By receiving public financing for more than 70% of our total budget, we are obliged to submit to the regulations established by the Comptroller General of the Republic, such as, for example, complying with certain standards in contracting services.
In this context, the contract with the current cleaning company expires on December 31, 2019, a scenario that made it possible for us to choose a new cleaning company that was chosen after calling for a private bid.
We have made this decision considering that the new company has experience in having good relations with its workers and was the one that presented the best offer in terms of machinery, supervision, quality of services, among other points.
We met with the company that was awarded the service and asked them to interview all the people who provided the cleaning service in the previous company, in order to eventually hire them. For several of them, whose contract ends in December, the old company reassigned them starting January 1, 2020 to other places so that they continue to perform their duties. The new company, for its part, hired 7. In this way, of 29 workers, 24 continue working, several with better offers than the ones they had.
As a cultural center that is a non-profit private law corporation that renders 70% of its expenses to the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage, expenses that must be related to activities linked to culture and the arts, it is impossible for us to hire 61 people in cleaning and guards. If we do so, as requested by the GAM Union, we would increase our staff strength by 60%. If we add to this that we would have to buy industrial machinery and assume the administrative cost, we would have to add 630 million pesos to our annual budget (321 only in the case of cleaning), something that is absolutely out of our possibilities.
We have managed to have very good working conditions for our team, which is made up of 100 people, who have good benefits and a minimum salary of $600,000. We have achieved it together and in 8 years, it is not a quick process.
Other organizations have internalized their services, examples that we find inspiring, but that are far from our current conditions, especially due to the difference with our minimum wage and the organizational structure.
The country is in a context of change, we hope to be an active part of them, without exclusions of any kind, without judgments and with transparency. We believe that together with other labor institutions, artists, workers and suppliers we will be able to have a global view to maximize efforts and acquire a management experience different from what we have today in the long term.
Publication date: December 27, 2019