Through a series of thorough and well-designed inspection visits, held between October and December 2009, labour inspectors in Peru investigated whether or not Skanska Peru, a “major subcontractor” to state-owned Brazilian oil company Petrobras, respected Peruvian labour law in regard to contract and agency labour in Piura, Peru. The inspectors, who worked closely with the Sindicato de los Trabajadores de Skanska de Peru, which is affiliated to ICEM affiliate FENUPETROL, wrote down their findings in a lengthy report, published early in 2010.

Of the total of 1,210 workers that Skanska Peru employs, 380 work in Piura, a town in the Talara region. The Skanska workers perform extraction, production, maintenance, and sales jobs for Petrobras.

According to Peruvian law, a subcontractor needs to run its operations on “its own account and risk,” needs to have its “own financial and technical means, as well as its own material,” needs to be responsible for its own operational results and needs to directly employ its own workers. Moreover, subcontractors should have more than one client and they cannot be entities that “merely supply staff,” with workers having a direct and immediate relationship with the user-enterprise.

The inspectors found that Skanska Peru violated all of the above. Petrobras, as the user-enterprise, not only decided on the total number, the working hours and the salaries of the Skanska workers employed through the “service contract,” Petrobras also “agreed” on collective bargaining agreements and was involved in the evaluation and sanctioning of contract staff. The material used (including even the IT needed to provide the Skanska services) was also the property of Petrobras. Skanska was furthermore found to be working for only one client in Talara, i.e. Petrobras.

Where there merely is a “straightforward provision of personnel,” the law in Peru foresees that the personnel in question need to be incorporated into the user enterprise. As Skanska was found to “fail to comply with the requirements to be a subcontractor,” the inspectors came to the conclusion that, as foreseen in the law, the 380 Skanska workers in Talara must be given a “direct and immediate” employment relationship with the user-enterprise, i.e. Petrobras.

The process currently is in a reconciliation stage, with all parties being given a chance first to react to the report.