Truck drivers' strike: Sutil supports March fuel price hike, but opposes road blockades and recalls Ricardo Lagos' decision

Seven months after the so-called fuel price spike, whose most immediate representation is the truckers' strike, Juan Sutil, businessman and former president of the Confederation of Production and Commerce (CPC), supported the government's decision to pass the international rise in oil prices onto local fuels at that moment. Although the founder and president of Empresas Sutil expressed some discrepancies regarding how the decision was communicated and managed from a political perspective (without going into detail), he maintained that it was a hike that had to be applied based on the reality of the public coffers. "I believe the fuel hike was inevitable. Technically, if Mepco had operated, in a period of 4 or 5 months, the same thing would have happened with fuel prices, and the State of Chile would have spent several hundred million dollars that are needed for health, for education, for housing access, and for other needs," he said in a conversation with Radio Infinita. Along those lines, Sutil suggested that perhaps this hike, the largest since records began, should have been done gradually, but he insisted that "the fundamental decision was the correct one." Nevertheless, the businessman assured that he understood the frustration of the transporters and their demands in the context of the impact the fuel hike, particularly diesel, has had on them. The former industry leader warned that there are small family-run SMEs who manage their own trucks that suffer an "imbalance" in their negotiating capacity in situations like these and have enormous difficulties resolving these types of problems. He added that often these are entrepreneurs who are normally acquiring assets that are falling out of the system, in some cases due to obsolescence. In this context, he said that this reality is very different from that of the large cargo intermediaries, who are those who manage contracts with companies. "Small transporters have a point there, because they are powerless in terms of how to handle these unforeseen situations, such as the global fuel price hike," he stated. The Strike Con todo, the businessman expressed his opposition to the strike being carried out by the truckers, which has already caused road closures in at least nine regions of the country, generating long traffic jams and putting several agricultural businesses at risk. "No one can interrupt the passage of people on the roads or access to ports, or access to the city, or access to any place. That is against the law, and what must be done is to prevent it," he said. Sutil added that these are "measures of force" that "without a doubt" fall outside the framework of the law and are used improperly "due to an inability to reach good understandings and agreements beforehand." In this context, the businessman called on the government to "participate" in finding a solution to the conflict quickly, "because otherwise it could escalate." When asked directly whether it is necessary for the authorities to apply the use of force against the truckers blocking the routes, the businessman implied that it is, and recalled what former president Ricardo Lagos did in 2002, during the collective transport strike. "I believe it is important to avoid that, and well, we have history. President Lagos, at that time with the collective transport strike, acted, right? The law prevailed, and I believe it can prevail too," he maintained. How Empresas Sutil Does It The businessman also revealed that at Empresas Sutil, all their transport agreements have clauses that allow, based on the price of fuel, the dollar, the value of tires, and other parameters, contracts to be reviewed every three or six months, allowing tariffs to rise or fall. "In our case, with some companies that provide us service, when the transport price hike occurred and there were 3 months left until the readjustment, or 2 months left, or 5 months left, what we did was reach a negotiation that allowed us to share or bear that cost. We did this not only in Chile, we also did it in the United States, which hit us very hard," he said. Sutil commented that large companies already have no major problems regarding understanding with large cargo transporters because they operate based on contracts, which is different from small transporters who own one or two trucks. "We have that resolved, and the contracts that the mining industry has, the large contracts are resolved, the forestry industry, the large loads," he affirmed. NEWSLETTERPulso PMLunes a viernes, 12:30 PMLo más relevante en mercados, empresas y negocios: información oportuna, contexto y contenido para tomar mejores decisiones. Al inscribirte estás aceptando los Términos y Condiciones y las Políticas de Privacidad de La Tercera.