Brazilian seamen resign after troops sent in

Press, 13 March 1987, Page 6

Brazilian seamen resign after troops sent in

NZPA-Reuter Santos

Brazil’s striking seamen have been resigning in droves rather than end a 13-day-old national stoppage on management terms.

The strike is part of a grim set of labour problems facing President Jose Sarney, who has despatched troops to the nation’s ports and oil installations. The authorities sent thousands of troops, in some cases backed bytanks, into nine oil refineries and six oil production centres on Wednesday because of the threat of a strike by 55,000 oil industry workers. The State oil company, Petrobras, said yesterday that troops had since withdrawn from five refineries. Marines arrived in the ports after the seamen’s strike was ruled illegal last Friday.

Seamen are in a defiant mood in Brazil’s mam port of Santos. One of their leaders, Orlando dos Santos, told Reuters that most of the 1100 seamen in the port had offered their resignations yesterday.

As he spoke, a first mate, Marcus Regis, from the cargo ship Lloyd Mexico, arrived with the resignations of 33 of the

vessel’s 36 crewmen. “Brazil's seamen are the second worst-paid in the world, after Ghana’s,” said Mr dos Santos. The national strike headquarters in Rio de Janeiro said seamen were offering their resignations in all the main ports.

The strike by 40,000 seamen. their first national stoppage in 25 years, comes at a delicate moment for the Government.

Brazil is facing a serious debt crisis brought on by a sharp deterioration in its trade balance. On February 20, the Government announced that it was suspending interest payments on its $ll9 billion overseas debt. The Government needs all the foreign exchange it can get and shipowners have been quick to denounce the seamen because of the harm their strike is doing to exports.

An advertisement placed in newspapers by the Shipowners Association (Sindarma) declared: “The seamen’s strike is illegal, irrational and unpatriotic.” The seamen respond that they cannot live on their present salaries. According to official pay lists available in the union’s office, the basic pay for ordinary seamen

is 2000 cruzados ($178) a month, while various allowances can take the total to 4000 cruzados ($356) a month. At the top end of the scale, captains earn 15,250 cruzados ($1317) a month with allowances.

Seamen said they had been spurred to their decision to resign when Marines boarded the ship Docemarte in Santos harbour on Wednesday night. They said seamen on board were being forced to work under duress. Talks in Rio de Janeiro yesterday involving the Minister of Labour, Almir Pazzionotto, seamen and employers failed to resolve the dispute. The seamen are demanding pay rises of about 200 per cent but have been offered less than half of that. Mr dos Santos said seamen had not received a pay rise since February, 1986. Since then prices have doubled with the collapse of the Government’s Cruzado Plan price freeze.

In the oil industry dispute, employees threatened to strike unless troops left the Duque de Caxias refinery near Rio de Janeiro.

The Petrobras president, Osires Silva, said that his company would not accept any kind of pressure from workers.