Endiama says that the former workers of the paralyzed mining projects (SML, Yetwene, Fucaúma, Luxinge and Luarica) have been carrying out constant demonstrations near its facilities "in order to disrupt the company's operation and paralyze the delegation's activities of the Sagrada Esperança do Lucapa Clinic ".
According to the mining company, the attempt to stop the activity of certain mining projects is "a form of pressure for a favorable outcome of the dispute" that opposes Endiama to a group of ex-workers.
The litigation has dragged on since 2008, when the aforementioned mining projects suspended activity due to the economic crisis, although an extrajudicial agreement was reached in 2013 regarding which "differences in interpretation" persist, the company said in a statement.
On December 19, 2019, the parties accepted mediation by the General Labor Inspectorate and the ministries of Public Administration, Employment and Social Security and Mineral and Petroleum Resources, but in March this year, given the unsuccessful negotiations, it was recommended recourse to the judicial system.
At stake are wages that former workers claim from former employers and want Endiama to pay, while the diamond company claims that the fact that the workers signed the extrajudicial agreement, which presupposed a certain compensation, ended the dispute.
Endiama claims that the former workers "had and have no legal-employment relationship" with the diamond company that it assumed "for humanitarian and social reasons, the commitment to negotiate and reach an understanding that culminated in the signed discharge terms".
As a result of this agreement, Endiama would have to make the payment to the National Social Security Institute of the amounts that allow workers to be integrated into the retirement system, a process that they say has already started.
The former workers, for their part, say that they were forced to sign the terms of a document that they now want to renegotiate, and have therefore advanced to a lawsuit.
