An operator who recently started working at the Tenaris company denounced abuses by his co-workers in a “rite of passage”, for which an investigation was opened and eight employees were dismissed from the company, according to prosecutor Maximiliano Breide. Obeid, head of the Neuquén Fiscal Unit for Environmental Crimes and Special Laws.
As stated Telam, The prosecutor explained that the episodes of abuse reported by the new employee occurred on two occasions, one of them the day he entered the company that produces tubes for energy use in the locker room where there were “struggling and touching” under the excuse that “it was his birthday celebration”; and the second episode in a combi “they assault him with sexual connotations”.
Faced with the episode of abuse, the operator reported the situation to the company’s managers, who “initiated an investigation and accompanied him to make the complaint,” according to prosecutor Breide Obeid, who also indicated that the company “gathered testimonies, presented the images from the security cameras and reported who were the people who participated in the events, because the employee, as he was new, did not know them by name and surname”.
“What emerged from that administrative investigation, from witnesses who corroborated the victim’s statements, is that it was not an isolated event, but that this was a rite that had been carried out, a rite of initiation for employment. That is why we are Hoping that from this comes another operator who has gone through the same situation and has not dared to denounce it, “said the prosecutor.
Breide Obeid explained that “since it is a sexual crime and being of legal age, they are crimes dependent on a private instance, this means that if they do not file a complaint, we cannot investigate or at least we cannot investigate having them as victims,” and He added that the complaint was made by the operator a month ago, when the events occurred.
Tenaris fired on Monday the five workers who, according to the investigation, were part of the episodes of abuse, and also dismissed three supervisors and managers in the sector, the prosecutor said.
Initially, the reaction of “some” of the employees investigated for the episodes of abuse took union action, for which “at first it seemed publicly dismissal for a labor issue, nothing more,” and according to the prosecutor, faced with this situation, “we rushed to make notifications of the criminal case, especially because they said publicly in the media that this was a labor conflict due to a complaint from a colleague, due to a misunderstanding, a fight”
“They referred to a matter of mistreatment, but what we saw was that the victim was at risk because they were branding him as responsible in some way for the dismissals,” said Breide Obeid, adding that “we notified five of the criminal proceedings (workers fired), and we establish the prohibition of approaching and contacting our victim”.
As reported by the judicial official, the complainant is in psychological support and stressed that the company “has known how to contain it.”
