They also passed an emergency resolution urging the Argentinian government to hand back SOMU (the Sindicato de Obreros Maritimos Unidos) to its members, after armed police raids in February resulted in the removal of elected union leaders from their offices and recent judicial administration, at the cost of the union, over alleged irregular activities. On 7 July, the ITF submitted a complaint to the ILO over Argentina violating ILO conventions in its interference with SOMU.
ITF inland navigation section chair Nick Bramley said: “This is a grave attack on trade union rights. SOMU is recognised as an international fighting union; this is intended as intimidation of the trade union movement as a whole.”
Find out more about the situation facing SOMU.
The union leaders – from Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Netherlands, Panama, Russia, Switzerland, UK and Uruguay – were gathered for the first of the ITF ‘pathway to congress’ conferences.
Each ITF section, region and department will meet in the run up to congress in 2018 to evaluate and monitor their progress in key areas of work, discuss the issues faced by workers in the sector and make plans and decisions for next steps in line with the ITF four levers strategy.
The unions passed two further resolutions. One concerned the risks to safe operations posed by the new set of locks on the Panama Canal, with the conference pledging to defend workers’ rights in the Mercosur region. The second reaffirmed the section’s commitment to activity in the tug industry and called for a tug working group to be set up and another tug conference this year. The unions also moved a motion in support of a crackdown on social dumping in the EU, which is currently impacting on thousands of transport sector jobs.
Yuri Sukhorukov from the Seafarers’ Union of Russia was elected vice chair of the ITF inland navigation section. River officer Cinthia Diaz from Centro de Patrones, Argentina was unanimously elected as its youth representative, and expressed her eagerness to boost participation by young workers, especially women, in their unions.
Find out more about the conference on Facebook and Twitter by searching #ITFinlandnav2016.
