The ILWU and Panama

While many shippers remain skeptical about the motives and tactics of today’s International Longshore and Warehouse Union, there remains a very progressive mission within the organization that deserves praise.

In its newsletter, The Dispatcher, the ILWU updated its members on how it is helping win “living wages” for dockworkers in Panama. Thanks to the efforts of U.S. organizers, management agreed to raise pay scales by 27%, and promised to improve abysmal safety standards.

According to the Dispatcher, Panama Ports has a high accident rate, and two workers were killed a month apart at the end of last year. In one accident, a crane lifting a container hit a six-high stack of other containers that were being stored on the dock, right next to the ship. As they fell, one hit a 22-year-old man who’d been working less than a month.

Panama Ports is a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Hutchinson Port Holdings Limited (HPH).

The Dispatcher says that workers at the terminal were trapped in a “yellow” or company union there for many years. Independent-minded longshoremen had a long history of trying to change this, and finally organized a new union – SINTRAPORSPA.

They collected over 2000 signatures on a petition for recognition, and asked for a government-administered election to certify it as workers’ bargaining representative.

Shippers who will be watching the planned “Panama Canal Expansion” early next year may also wish to track the social and economic improvements Panama Ports are finally taking into consideration.

You can bet the ILWU will.