Vol. 77/No. 34 September 30, 2013
Docked in Australia, Egyptian sailors strike, win back pay
SYDNEY — Eleven Egyptian seamen on the coal carrier Wadi Alkarm carried out a successful weeklong strike after the ship berthed in Port Kembla, south of Sydney, Sept. 5. They refused to crew the Egyptian government-owned ship, until they received back pay from June when their wages were cut in half.After being approached by the sailors, the local International Transport Federation and Maritime Union of Australia backed them in the dispute.
Garry Keane, an MUA official in Port Kembla, told the Militant that he met with the men on board every day during the weeklong action and negotiated on their behalf with the Australian and Egyptian authorities.
He was told by one of the sailors that they had also been “working for nine months with a total of only six hours of shore leave.” They had been denied access to food or drink from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. each night while at sea. They had to pay exorbitant prices, such as $9 for a can of Coke.
The Australian immigration department worked against the sailors by revoking their maritime visas, the normal shore leave entitlement under international law.
An MUA press release said, “Immigration officials told them if they left the ship they would end up in Villawood Detention Centre.” Keane said that after the issue was publicized by the MUA, immigration officials restored their rights to come ashore “at the discretion of the captain.”
After the company made threatening phone calls to family members in Egypt, saying the seamen’s action was jeopardizing their jobs, four of the sailors agreed to be repatriated by air to Egypt Sept. 7.
Despite an agreement to pay all the men their wages in full, Egyptian authorities played brinkmanship, trying to avoid paying them as the men prepared to catch a plane to Cairo.
Only when the seven remaining sailors, backed by the MUA, threatened to extend the dispute did they receive their wages and a promise that the other four would also be paid.
MUA members crewing the Pacific Triangle, which was also berthed at Port Kembla, collected $500 for their fellow seafarers from Egypt when they learned of the fight, Keane said.
— Ron Poulsen
Colombia farmers, truckers end 3-week anti-gov’t protests
Three weeks of protests by farmers and truckers in Colombia have won concessions from the government, although many demands remain unresolved.Hundreds of thousands of working farmers and small capitalist farmers who launched the “national farm strike” Aug. 19 lifted most of their highway blockades throughout the country after the government agreed to some of their demands. The farmers are pressing for government price supports, lower prices for agricultural supplies, cancellation of debts owed to banks, and modification of free trade agreements with the U.S. and other governments.
A Sept. 10 statement by Farm Dignity, which includes organizations of coffee, potato, cacao, rice, dairy, onion, citrus, grain and vegetable farmers, said that the government had agreed to extend existing subsidies for another year, restrict the import of some agricultural products, forgive debts of some farmers who owe less than 20 million pesos ($10,300) and subsidize 30 percent of fertilizer costs.
According to farm leaders, soon after the road blockades were lifted the government began reneging.
“Now they’re talking about a 4 percent cut in the price of fertilizers,” Rubén Dario Cifuentes, a small coffee farmer and leader of Farm Dignity in Cauca province, said in a Sept. 13 phone interview. “That’s ludicrous.”
“We’ve achieved something, but we’re still not satisfied,” he said.
“The government is trying to divide the movement by negotiating with farmers department by department,” Urbano García, a small cacao farmer in Magdalena and an organizer for Fensuagro, a farmer and farmworkers union, told the Militant.
“We want the debts of the small farmers cancelled, not renegotiated,” García said. “The government said they will cut tariffs on imported fertilizers and other farm supplies, but we want them subsidized because their cost is still too high. We don’t want temporary subsidies for the crops we sell. We want price supports above the cost of production.”
Hundreds of thousands of drivers who own their own trucks ended their work stoppage Sept. 5. They were demanding the government lower the price of gas from $4.50 to $1 a gallon and that their pay include a minimum amount per mile to cover truck maintenance.
The government agreed to freeze the price of gas until December and set up a commission to come up with a new formula for determining prices.
“We also won a minimum of 133 pesos (7 cents) per ton per mile for truck maintenance,” said Truckers Association of Colombia President Pedro Aguilar.
“The most important thing we won is respect for the drivers,” Aguilar said. “We are hoping the government will carry out the agreement.”
Fierce repression by paramilitaries, soldiers and cops over the last three decades had decimated some farmworker unions and farmers’ associations.
Fensuagro Vice President Huber Ballesteros, a leader of the protest movement, was arrested Aug. 25 on frame-up charges of “rebellion and terrorism.” The union is demanding Ballesteros be freed and the charges dropped.
The recent strikes show that “the fear is beginning to go away,” said García. “People are beginning to demand their rights.”
— Seth Galinsky