Brazil & Southern Cone - February 2013 (ISSN 1741-4431)

Workers at Brazil’s main port of Santos, one of the country’s main export hubs. walked out for six hours on 22 February in protest at the government’s reform plans for the ports sector, disrupting crucial agri-exports including soya beans and maize. Days earlier (18 February), port workers grouped under Força Sindical seized a Chinese ship at Santos

The seized Zhen Hua 10 ship was carrying construction equipment for a new terminal at the port of Santos, according to a statement by Embraport, who requested its immediate release. The Rousseff government was having none of it, insisting that it intended to go ahead with concessions worth an estimated US$372m to restructure ten ports in the first half of the year. The government has identified as its first concession priorities seven ports in Santos and three in Belem, as part of an overall public-private plan to attract US$27.6bn in investment to the country’s creaking and overburdened ports, where backlogs extend not weeks but months. President Rousseff is determined to resist the union workers - who fear job losses and looser labour conditions under a newly approved regulatory framework. The new law shifts management responsibilities to the central government and away from the port authorities. Proposals would also allow new terminals to directly recruit workers, ending an obligation to source them through a central agency.

João Carlos Gonçalves, Forca Sindical’s secretary general, warned of wider strikes if labour regulations under the new ports law approved late last year are not improved; but Mario Teixeira, the head of Fenccovib, which groups port unions, warned against “radicalism”, stressing the need for dialogue.

The left-wing government has the support of the country’s key agriculture and business sectors in its efforts. Following a private sector meeting with the minister of the presidency, Gleisi Hoffman, to discuss the issue on 18 February, Paulo Godoy, the president of the Brazilian Association of Infrastructure and Capital Goods Industries (Abdib), said that investment in ports would “inevitably” create more jobs. Senator Kátia Abreu, president of the National Agriculture Confederation (CNA), said that those opposing the new ports’ law risked damaging Brazil in their defence of sector “deficiencies”. “Efficiency does not happen without competition”, she noted

Brazil posted a record US$11.4bn current account deficit in January, on the back of a US$4.0bn trade deficit. Shipping out its harvest to key export customers like China and India will be critical to reducing this deficit in coming months. The government eventually reached an agreement with the port workers’ union to suspend further industrial action until 15 March. Talks are now on-going over the issue of Decree 595, aiming to liberalise labour laws at Brazil’s ports.

• Rio’s latest Favela pacification lasts just 25m

On 3 March Rio de Janeiro’s state security secretary, José Mariano Beltrame, celebrated the latest favela pacification operations but warned that the security force takeover was just the first phase of a long process. Thirteen favelas in the Complexo do Caju and Barreira do Vasco (with a population of about 20,000), located near Rio de Janeiro’s international airport and port zone, were taken by 1,400 military and navy officers in about 30 minutes at 5am on Sunday morning. The security forces encountered no resistance from the area’s criminal gangs, who tend to flee well ahead of time. Beltrame signalled that the next target could be the violent and drug gang-ridden Complexo da Maré (est. pop 75,000) also close to the airport. The military will control the areas until special police pacification units (UPPs) are introduced. To date, 30 UPPs have been put in place in Rio, with a target of 40 by 2014. State Governor Sérgio Cabral declared “the renaissance” of the Complexo do Caju.