The Chilean government has reached an agreement with port workers’ unions to end the strike that has paralysed several ports for more than three weeks and put the country’s fruit exports in jeopardy.
The deal was reached on Saturday morning following a 14-hour meeting led my Labour Minister Juan Carlos Jobet involving 26 union leaders. It guarantees that workers will receive retroactive payments for lunch breaks owed between 2005 and 2013, which had been deemed by employers to be time not worked. Jobet said the agreement includes plans to set up a working group with the new government to hammer out a new labour law for port workers.
Cristián Allendes, president of fruit producers association Fedefruta, welcomed the resolution of the strike, which he said had come about partly as a result of the efforts of Fedefruta and exporter association Asoex to bring both sides to the negotiating table. However, he said the situation was far from over for the fruit industry who had to bear the costs of the strike in terms of monetary and job losses. Allendes called on the government to pass the new labour law as a matter of urgency in order to avoid perishable cargoes being caught up in disputes in the future.
The strike is estimated to have caused losses of more than US$50m in fruit exports. Customs authorities said on Friday that 4,384 containers were stranded in terminals up and down the country as a result of the strike.
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