Dow Jones Newswires
November 26, 1998
BRASILIA -- Brazil's Congress voted Wednesday a measure to allow the hiring of port workers by labor management groups known as OGMOs, a function that was previously taken up by workers' unions.
Port workers nationwide went on strike Tuesday to protest the voting, which strips them of any input on who will be scheduled to work when and on what cargo.
Laborers from the major port of Santos said they won't return to work until further talks.
"We will wait for the return of our representatives from Brasilia to talk further on the matter, and, until we speak, we won't get back to work," said Jurandir Franca da Hora, president of the Santos port administrative workers' union, known as Sindaport.
He said striking workers, some of whom Tuesday broke into OGMOs offices and destroyed documents and equipment, aren't in the right frame of mind to return to work.
While workers from Santos port seem set to continue striking, members of port unions' from across the country are meeting now in Brasilia to decide on how to respond to the vote.
"We are discussing whether to carry on striking or to set a new date for protests later," said Helio Alves dos Santos, from the stevedores' union of Paranagua port, who is taking part in the meeting.
The OGMOs were created under the port privatization law of 1993, which set out a number of measures to implement the transfer of port operations to the private sector from the government.
As part of the process, port workers who were linked to the governmental docks' companies which ran the ports have been gradually transferred to a new status known as "casual workers."
The casual workers are still linked to the unions which have always organized the labor shifts, but with the new measure the OGMOs will take over.
The newly created OGMOs are supposed to attend the interests of both workers and their employers, port operators, the former fear that the number of workers' requested per shift will be cut back, generating unemployment.
There are an estimated 50,000 port workers in Brazil, of which 12,000 are based in Santos.
