Mexican dockers fight for right to union, 18 years after illegal asset grab

12 September 2008

Dockers in the Mexican port of Veracruz are fighting to have their trade union recognised 18 years after it was illegally dissolved at gunpoint. Tomorrow survivors of the death threats and attempted military crushing of the Unión de Estibadores y Jornaleros del Puerto de Veracruz (UEJPV) will present their votes for a new Executive Board for the union to the same Labour Ministry that was complicit in government attempts to silence them back in 1991 during the presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

The move by the UEJPV’s members follows a meeting at which they voted to confront the government with their intention to legally re-register the union, which had represented dockers in Veracruz Port since 1917. In the 1970s it resisted attempts to make it a shareholder in the port as contrary to its principles. Some 1500 dockers were forced to become stockholders at the time. On Navy Day, 1 June 1991, following threats from the President and a campaign of government harassment, armed police and soldiers in plain clothes ‘requisitioned’ the port.

Trade unions representing port workers were dispossessed of their buildings, bank accounts, properties, legal documents, safety deposit boxes and the collective bargaining agreements which granted their members the exclusive right to work in the port. The estimated value of the confiscated assets was US$3 million. The federal government then began further privatising the port, imprisoning some of the union members who protested and driving others to illness or suicide. When the ITF, to which the UEJPV was affiliated, protested to Mexican government its response was to kidnap the President of the union, Angel M Bellizia Jimenez, threatening him and his family with death if he did not sign a statement asking the ITF not to get involved. His colleagues now report that in fear of his life he signed, and died a few years later, sick and intimidated. Now the surviving members have decided it is time for them to repossess their union, and are once again turning to the ITF for help.

Andres Ramon Alomía, UEJPV Secretary, explained: “The threat that we’d be murdered or kidnapped like Angel Bllizia frightened us. We were threatened with prison and losing our homes – some of us were threatened with death, and were beaten with guns. Today, we’ve seen 18 years pass and some of our colleagues die and we have decided that if the government wants us to disappear, it is better to die standing up and being counted than feeling that they stole everything from us and we did not defend ourselves. We are meeting, electing a new Executive Board and readying ourselves to fight for our right to recover our union.”

Antonio Fritz, ITF Inter-American Regional Secretary, added: "This is a very sensitive subject. Everyone in Veracruz knew that the government used illegal tactics to take over the port. We also remember what we saw going on there from our vantage point as seafarers. It is important that workers fight to recover their rights and also their assets, which were illegally stolen. The World Bank has used Veracruz as an example of a successful port privatisation (even though it was already partially privatised) but it has never bothered itself with asking what happened to the assets stolen from the dockers. Now it’s time to remedy that injustice".

“Nowadays the port is controlled by more than 32 different service companies, many of  which have ‘yellow’ unions – front organisations which act in accordance with the companies’ interest. Dockers are constantly exploited and their labour rights are denied with the collusion of the authorities.”

ENDS

 

ENDS

For more information contact ITF press officer, Sam Dawson.
Direct line: + 44 (0)20 7940 9260.
Email: dawson_sam@itf.org.uk

International Transport Workers' Federation - ITF:
HEAD OFFICE
ITF House, 49 - 60 Borough Road, London SE1 1DS
Tel: + 44 (0) 20 7403 2733
Fax: + 44 (0) 20 7375 7871
Email: mail@itf.org.uk
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