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Historic strike halts Panama Canal expansion

Published Jan 26, 2012 8:32 PM

Olmedo Beluche is a sociologist, professor at the University of Panama, and veteran political activist in the Unity in the Comprehensive People’s Struggle organization (ULIP).

Some 5,000 workers who are building two new locks for post-panamax ships in the expansion of the Panama Canal went on strike Jan. 16. The stoppage has been total, both in the Pacific and Atlantic areas, and joined by all categories of workers, from assistants to low-level supervisors.

[Post-panamax ships are larger than the maximum-size ships that currently move through existing locks — WW]

A list of demands shows that a series of abuses committed by the United for the Canal Group consortium provoked the strike. The consortium is headed by the Spanish transnational Sacyr and the main Panamanian construction company, the CUSA Group. The family of the current administrator of the Panama Canal, German Zubieta, owns CUSA.

The strike has lasted for a week and is hitting a key sector of the economy. It is so strong that the Ministry of Labor — which has been so pro-business and anti-worker in other conflicts — has been cautious in its statements and has avoided repressing the workers.

The strikers have denounced all kinds of abuses: from unjustified firings to discriminatory lower wages for Panamanian workers compared to those paid to Spanish and Italian employees. This is reminiscent of the dual salary scale based on ethnic origin imposed by U.S. imperialism in the Canal Zone, a truly racist apartheid that existed during the U.S.’s colonial presence [beginning in 1903] until 1977.

The workers’ demands centered on an obsolete pay scale enacted by the Panamanian government for canal workers, known as Decree No. 3 of March 4, 1980. This scale has lagged behind the galloping inflation in recent years, the salary adjustments made in the minimum Wage Acts of 2009 and 2011, and the collective agreement of the Sole Union of Construction (SUNTRACS) with the employers (CAPAC).

Decree No. 3 fixes a maximum of $2.90 an hour for the lower category, while striking workers and the leaders of SUNTRACS demand a minimum of $6 an hour. The Minister of Labor has proposed an increase not exceeding 5 percent of the basic wage of this decree.

The problem has become complex because not only is Decree 3 obsolete, but it expresses the segregationist criterion with which the bourgeoisie and the Panamanian governments have wanted to handle matters regarding the Panama Canal since it reverted to national sovereignty in 2000.

Since the early 1990s, shortly after the U.S. invasion of 1989, Yankee imperialism demanded from the Panamanian bourgeoisie that in order to transfer the canal, as established by the 1977 treaties, a legal special status should be established, segregated from the jurisdiction of the rest of the republic.

Many have criticized this status. It is as if the Canal Zone continues to exist, only this time administered by “Panamanians,” since the board of directors of the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) is composed of senior business people from the banking and construction sectors who have Washington’s endorsement.

It is under those circumstances that in 1994, the Panamanian capitalist ruling class and its political parties, with U.S. endorsement, imposed Title XIV of the Constitution. This fails to give the Panama Canal an autonomous regime, but instead imposes a real segregation from the rest of the nation.

Creates a state within a state

Among other things, Article 320 of the Panamanian Constitution established that the ACP budget “is not part of the General State Budget.” It is as if another state had been created within the Panamanian state, the same as the previous Canal Zone, with the only difference that now it is administered by “Panamanians.”

Following that segregationist logic, Article 322 of the Constitution established a “special” labor system for workers in the Panama Canal, a system outside the national laws and the Labor Code. Among other things, this article prohibits strikes in the canal, which constitutes a violation of the Constitution itself, international law and the principles of the International Labor Organization. …

We say that this strike has historical significance because it has hit the segregationist scheme that the Panamanian bourgeoisie and Yankee imperialism have wanted to establish for the Panama Canal, and it has exposed the constitutional and legal contradictions covered under the ACP scheme.

The contradictions expressed in Decree 3 are even more absurd and ridiculous because the “United for the Canal Group” workers are not employees of the ACP, but of a private consortium which should be governed by the Labor Code and Panamanian labor laws, such as the minimum wage.

It is a double abuse at the outset to claim that these workers were governed by Decree 3 of March 4, 1980. Therefore, these workers have acted correctly by striking to demand their salary adjustment, both under the SUNTRACS-CAPAC collective bargaining agreement and under the law governing the minimum wage in Panama.

The worst of all the abuses and paybacks — and the one that has frozen the negotiations aimed at resolving the strike — is that today it was learned [La Prensa, Jan. 21] that there is a secret clause between the United for the Canal Group and the ACP (contract clause 3.7) that obligates the Panamanian state to pay 100 percent of any wage adjustment that goes beyond Decree 3 of 1980. This is the last straw — that the Panamanian state, either through the general budget or the ACP, has to cover wage increases from its funds to guarantee the profits of national and foreign entrepreneurs benefitting from the canal’s expansion.

When the debate on the expansion of the Panama Canal through a new set of locks for post-panamax ships began in 2006, those of us who were opposed argued two things, now shown to be accurate. First, the work is not urgent to world trade because the canal is far from its maximum capacity, which implies indebting the country for the benefit of international shipping companies. Second, spending at least $5.2 billion on this work means transferring income from the canal to benefit banks and builders — income that should serve to solve the Panamanian people’s social problems.

The struggle over generations for sovereignty was so that the Panamanian people should live better, not to benefit a small national and foreign business elite. That is what is happening; the wealthy from the United for the Canal Group are taking for them and the overseas elite the profits from the canal expansion, while paying crumbs to the Panamanian workers. That is why this strike has been legitimate and historic and has the support of all trade union and popular organizations in Panama.

Mundo Obrero translated this article, which is slightly shortened here.