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LatinNews Regional Monitor: Brazil & Southern Cone - 12 June 2018

In brief: Brazil

*Workers from Brazil’s state-run electricity firm, Eletrobras, began a 72-hour national strike on 11 June to protest against the Brazilian government’s plans to privatise parts of the company, Latin America’s largest electricity generation and distribution firm. The Associação dos Empregados da Eletrobras (AEEL), the Eletrobras workers’ union, argues that the plans by the government led by President Michel Temer, which are currently before the federal congress, to privatise and sell off parts of Eletrobras to raise an estimated US$3.2bn in funds to shore up the government’s finances and reduce the fiscal deficit, will generate “losses for society”. AEEL president Wilson Ferreira Junior claimed that privatisation of the firm could lead to sharp electricity tariff increases of up to 30%, as well as mass layoffs. According to AEEL, 90% of Eletrobras workers have adhered to the strike, although Eletrobras’s management has said that the firm’s operations have not yet been affected and that there currently is no risk of blackouts.

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