Thanks to the work of International Dockworkers Council (IDC), the Justice Tribunal of Santa Catarina, in Brazil, has voted in favour of the Itajaí Dockworkers Trade Union in its struggle against the State’s judicial system. The dockworkers were protesting against the discrimination they had suffered from at the hands of some judges, who for some time had been reducing their employment rights and placing them on the same level as casual workers.
With this decision by the Justice Tribunal, the IDC chalked up a victory in its strategy of consolidating and organisation which defends the rights of dockworkers wherever they are. The work of the IDC was decisive in workers registered with the OGMO (the Labour Management Body) regaining their proper professional classification. As permanent and casual workers were placed on the same level, the workers on the payroll had seen their salaries cut to a large extent.
In reality, the aim of the policy of placing permanent and casual workers on the same level was to discredit the trade unions and ignore the law in force, nullifying the professional qualifications demanded by the trade unions and making the OGMO, a body which supplies the ports with their labour force, irrelevant.
For the IDC, which has fully supported the demands of its colleagues in Itajaí, the substitute workers must be treated as such, i. e., only in cases where there is an evident lack of manpower that the normal workers cannot fill. In Itajaí, however, the distribution of work between casual and registered workers has been used to divide the dockworkers and harass the trade union. The decision of the Santa Catarina Tribunal of Justice is a success for the IDC and the Itajaí dockworkers in their struggle to dignify the port profession.
