Chilean dock workers end month-long strike

A month-long strike wave that hit ports up and down the length of Chile’s coast came to an end on 25 January after port bosses signed on to a government-brokered agreement with leaders of the Unión Portuario de Chile (UPC – Dock Workers’Union of Chile).

Port bosses agreed to make one-off payments of 1.5 million pesos ($3,000) to dockers and to reinstate all those sacked during the strikes.

The strike began on 23 December in the port of Angamos in Mejillones, northern Chile. Dockers were fighting for a pay rise and for employer recognition of the right of casual dock workers (eventuales) to be represented.

The latter demand is significant and helps to explain the explosive nature of the strikes. Eventuales are hired day by day as required for 7½ hour shifts and are denied health benefits, pensions, paid vacations and other benefits. They have no legal right to strike or to be a part of collective negotiations.

Chile’s current export boom has brought a surge in the use of eventuales; they now make up 80 percent of the country’s 12,000 dock workers. Yet they are denied union recognition and negotiation rights under the still operational anti-worker Labour Code put in place by the Pinochet dictatorship.

The Mejillones dock workers were the catalyst for a strike wave last year, when they demanded payment for their half-hour meal breaks (colación). Payment for meal breaks became law in 2005, but stevedoring companies refused to comply. A militant 23-day strike included a wave of illegal solidarity strikes that affected 85 percent of Chile’s ports. Those strikes were successful and the Mejillones dockers won their demand for colación pay.

Both strike waves were met with police intimidation and repression. Dock workers awoke on New Year’s Day to the news that their fellow worker Luis González Fuentes had been severely injured near the picket lines and was sent to hospital in a coma. Despite police denials, there is little doubt as to who is responsible for the attack.

Three days later workers struck at the port of San Antonio in the central Valparaíso area. Dockers were demanding full back pay for the colación breaks denied them from 2005 to 2013.

From this point, the trickle of illegal stoppages quickly turned into a flood. On 6 January, the UPC in the north called a strike in support of Mejillones comrades. Ports in Antofagasta, Iquique, Tocopilla, Chañaral and Huasco stopped work.

The following day, police brutally assaulted picket lines at Angamos. Military-trained police and Special Forces units used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets in an attempt to end the blockade. The dock workers resisted, and the police were forced to withdraw.

In response to the police repression, the UPC in the Bío Bío region called a strike on 8 January. Work at the ports of Lirquén, Penco, Coronel, San Vicente, Calbuco, Corral, Puerto Montt and Chacabuco stopped. Other actions took place at different ports across Chile.

For the next two weeks, the government of conservative President Sebastián Piñera, employers in strike-affected export industries and the big business press were as one: for the good of Chile’s international image, the strikes must end, they said.

These same people showed a remarkable lack of concern about the image that the police state of siege sent to the outside world. Flashbacks to the Pinochet dictatorship are apparently no problem, but images of striking dock workers are.

The dockers won support and active solidarity from bank workers and copper miners, as well as the student movement. No official support was forthcoming from the leadership of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Chile (United Workers’Centre, the main Chilean union federation). Communist and Socialist Party leaders did not want to embarrass the incoming centre-left “New Majority” government of Michelle Bachelet.

On 22 January, the Labour Ministry held a tripartite meeting with UPC leaders and port bosses. An agreement was eventually reached. The results were mixed.

After initial union demands for eight million pesos ($16,000) per docker for years of unpaid colaciones, a one-off payment of 1.5 million pesos ($3,000) was agreed to. More importantly, union leaders failed to bring the central demand of the Mejillones dockers – recognition of the rights of eventuales – to the negotiating table.

In the space of 12 months, and in the face of the bosses’ intransigence and police repression, Chilean dock workers have twice used the weapon of solidarity strikes – illegal under the current Labour Code – to paralyse the country’s ports. It is more than likely, given both their newfound strength and the fact that the question of the rights of eventuales remains unresolved, that these workers will once again be taking action in the not too distant future.