SANTOS, Brazil - The union representing dockworkers at Santos have vowed to bring Latin America’s busiest port to a standstill on Monday, the same day that the power to appoint so-called casual workers is due to be transferred from the union to a workers pool financed by the private sector.
“No vessel will operate” on Monday, Wanderlei da Silva, president of the union, said during an assembly today at the union’s Santos headquarters. “Everything will be brought to a standstill.”
“We will not give up the appointment of casual workers,” he said to applause from a few hundred union members.
The workers’ pool, called OGMO, was established to take the power to appoint port workers away from the powerful trade unions, which have led repeated strikes at the port in recent years. Several categories of casual workers are already appointed by OGMO, but the dockworkers, who account for more than half of all port workers, have resisted the move.
Nevertheless, the union will not call for an outright strike because the law calls for the transfer. Instead, stevedores will demand the strict implementation of safety and security regulations before accepting to load and unload vessels.
A terminal official has called some of these regulations “extremely stupid.” According to an OGMO representative, those would be impossible to implement at Santos, because they are allegedly too detailed.
In practice, dockworkers are due to withdraw their labor from midnight on Sunday.
