A deal signed on Aug. 12 has ended an eight-month-long strike by environmental agents in Brazil, but doesn’t resolve their long-standing grievances over pay and work conditions. “The agreement was made against the will of the civil servants,” ASCEMA, the association representing the agents, wrote in a public statement. “The servants were obliged to accept the proposal in order not to suffer even greater damage,” it added. Employees of IBAMA, the federal environmental agency; ICMBio, which manages national protected areas; and the Brazilian Forest Service, which oversees forest concessions, went on strike in January to demand better salaries and work conditions. They also demanded a risk bonus for agents working in dangerous zones and a new public tender to hire new agents; according to ASCEMA, there should be twice the number of environmental agents as there are currently. The agreement signed this week, however, focuses on pay raises. The Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services, MGI, which has led the negotiations, stated on its website that a working group will be created to discuss the unfulfilled demands. Environmental agents have been on strike since January to demand better salaries, work conditions and benefits like a risk bonus. Image courtesy of ASCEMA. “The strike should end, but the workers will continue to rally since the agreement is very far from the restructuring the workers want,” ASCEMA said. The end of the strike will come as a relief to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, especially amid record fires in…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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