Panama Canal Pilots Union representatives with top ILWU officials at the Longshore Caucus in Panama City, Panama, on April 18, 2016.
Translated from the Spanish original, which was published at Panama On:
Panama Canal Pilots Union receives the ILWU on Panamanian soil
From Monday April 18th to Friday the 22nd, a series of meetings between the Union of Panama Canal Pilots (UPCP) and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) will be held.
This meeting, which is the first to take place in Panama, aims to reaffirm the existing strategic alliance between these two unions, which is mainly based on the noble principle of international solidarity, which has come in handy in the struggles of workers around the world, in this case, in the maritime port sector.
For Captain Londor Rankin, general secretary of the UPCP, these meetings are fundamental and important in confronting the major powers and financial interests that are the same that operate both in Panama and the United States.
“We must defend the interests of our members, including their wages and employment conditions, as we move forward in the endless struggle to improve them,” said Rankin.
Notably, the Coast Longshore Division is, as its name suggests, an autonomous division of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Union (ILWU, for its acronym in English), consisting mainly of stevedores, clerks and foremen; distributed among 30 local unions, the largest being located in Los Angeles/Long Beach, San Francisco/Oakland, and Seattle.
In June 2012, during the 35th Convention of the ILWU, the affiliation of the Union of Panama Canal Pilots with this great organization was completed. It was the product of the friendship that developed between several members of both unions, in the early years of this century, when the ILWU was subject to a “lockout” at the hand of their employer, while they were engaged in negotiating their new collective agreement. The entrance of the Canal pilots to the family of the ILWU meant the creation, within that organization, of the Panama Canal Division. Subsequently, at the Convention of 2015, it was strengthened with the inclusion of the companions of the Industrial Union of Dockworkers and Similar of Panama, (SINTRAPORSPA), a union grouping that brings together most workers in the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal.
Captain Rankin said the fact that the meeting is being held in Panama, just two months from the opening of the expanded Canal, is a happy coincidence.
“In addition, it serve to reiterate our brotherhood and let our employers know that we are not alone in our struggles to defend the interests of workers – and we will never give up,” said the secretary general of the UPCP.