Several injured in a new confrontation in Ensenada by a UOCRA Union Intern

The tough internal fight of the Construction Workers Union (UOCRA) in La Plata added another chapter this Monday morning: workers from a hydroelectric plant in Ensenada, which belongs to the Techint company, they denounced that a gang headed by “Puly” Medina -one of the sons of former union leader Juan Pablo “Pata” Medina He attacked them with stones, sticks and even firearms.

“I come to work and see how the Medina gang leaves us”, said to TN a worker with a bloody face from a cut on his forehead from a stone.

“They came with a single purpose, to harm the workers”said another colleague, who showed bruises on his waist from the blows. “That is why the Medina clan wanted to return, so as not to let us work “added another worker.

According to these accounts, UOCRA intends to recover works in the region; many of which now belong to the SITRIAC union, which is that it is the Union of the Workers of the Construction Industry.

“Due to the mismanagement of Gerardo Martínez (UOCRA), we chose having the freedom of association to choose to go to SITRAIC. We are no longer in the orbit, neither of Gerardo Martínez, nor of Pata Medina nor of the inspector Trujillo, who was the one who came to bring all this problem because the solution was already given in the area with the previous intervention. All this is due to a management that we do not know “assured one of the workers against the UOCRA attack.

The complainants said that several of their colleagues were injured, one of whom had to be rushed to the hospital for being shot in the leg, and that many of their vehicles parked outside the hydroelectric power plant were destroyed with shovels and stones.

Everything would have been triggered when people linked to the Medina showed up at the plant, located in the diagonal 74 road to Punta Lara, to demand the jobs that Techint had promised them and that was when they clashed with the workers.

But, according to what was published by the newspaper The day, from the UOCRA deny that version and maintains that “workers linked to SITRAIC, those who responded to Carlos Vergara (inspector of the La Plata section of the union), began to pull their colleagues from the inside of the work to the outside” . In that sense, they assured that “A colleague from the UOCRA was wounded with a stab in the abdomen.”

Last week, a demonstration from the same fraction of the UOCRA demonstrated on Calle 44, between 4 and 5, to demand the cessation of the intervention and the return of “Pata” Medina to the leadership of the UOCRA La Plata.

They cut streets and sidewalks; and they took over the neighborhood’s surroundings with drums, snare drums, batacudas, firecrackers and thunder bombs. It was a regrettable postcard, since in the midst of the outbreak of coronavirus, people displayed themselves without a mask and did not respect social distancing either.

They asked for “the key to return to our house” around the building that for several years was the meeting point for thousands of members, and they even forced the doors and managed to enter the building.

In September 2020, a similar confrontation had occurred: workers who define themselves as “self-summoned” blocked the entrances to the YPF plant and the Ensenada thermoelectric plant in protest at the “extortion and tightening” of activists who respond to Juan Pablo “Pata” Medina, the former head of the union’s section in the Buenos Aires capital that house arrest in a case where you are accused of illicit association, repeated extortion and aggravated coercion. Currently, he is in the custody of the Gendarmerie and monitored with an electronic ankle brace.

I kept reading:

UOCRA workers protested against “Pata” Medina in front of the YPF plant in Ensenada

They arrested in La Plata one of the grandchildren of “Pata” Medina