A legal appeal filed by the union in the labor court of Limón prevented the dismissal of 110 workers, which was to be executed on December 22, from the transnational fruit company Chiquita Brands.
The workers' representatives understand, however, that this would be the first of a chain of layoffs motivated by the upcoming start-up of the Moin Container Terminal (TCM), which is being built by the Danish transnational APM Terminals and which is expected to start operating in February 2018.
This terminal, which is exclusively for container ships, will capture a good part of the complementary port services that are currently provided by stowage companies (loading and unloading of ships), yards (refurbishment and repair of containers), among other services, for the ports of Moin and the city of Limon that are managed by the State Board of Port Administration and Development of the Atlantic Coast (Japdeva).
Chiquita decided to lay off 110 of the 260 workers in Limon, and the employees of Dole, another fruit transnational, were told that there would be layoffs this year.
After fruitless conciliation meetings with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MTSS) in December, the union filed a collective social and economic dispute with Limon's labor court to stop the dismissal process in Chiquita.
The judge accepted the dispute and indicated to the company that it could not execute the dismissals. Currently the constitution of the conciliatory body is being considered, but the issue of dismissals is raised, and "we estimate that when the TCM starts operations, another 100 workers from Chiquita property will be laid off," said Maikol Hernandez, the general secretary of the Industrial Union of Costa Rica's Banana and Pineapple Workers (Sintracobal).
The dismissal also threatens stowage workers (around 2,500 people) and cargo transporters that move the ports of Japdeva, stated the leader.
Hernandez said that the MTSS behaved weakly and didn't enforce the agreements that prevented the massive dismissals of workers. In addition, it didn't have an appropriate response to the Government's lack of response to their requests to act to prevent the layoffs that the opening of the TCM would cause.
In the short term, this scenario will lead to the dismissal of workers in container yards, where skilled labor is engaged in refrigeration, welding in aluminum and other tasks related to the export of perishable products, as well as for workers who have been working in this area for 20 or 25 years and that can't be easily sent to work in construction, as the MTSS suggests, he said.
The Minister of Labor, Alfredo Hasbun, said the government had not been unresponsive to the situation and mentioned a series of actions they had undertaken.
Source: semanariouniversidad
