At Pana­ma Ports, how­ev­er, this sit­u­a­tion has begun to change. A few weeks ago the union signed a new con­tract with rais­es total­ing more than 27% over the next four years. One fac­tor that made this agree­ment pos­si­ble was sup­port from a U.S. union, the Inter­na­tion­al Long­shore and Ware­house Union (ILWU). That agree­ment will have a big impact on the lives of long­shore­men and their families.

PANA­MA CITY, PANA­MA — You see a lot of parked taxis in the park­ing lot at the Pana­ma Ports ter­mi­nal here. But they’re not wait­ing to give rides to long­shore work­ers — dock­work­ers them­selves are the dri­vers. Long­shore wages in Pana­ma are so low that after a shift dri­ving a crane, a long­shore­man has to put in anoth­er shift dri­ving a taxi just to survive.

“That’s one rea­son why the com­pa­ny had to con­stant­ly hire new work­ers,” recalls Ramiro Cortez, a leader of the Pana­man­ian union SIN­TRA­PORSPA. ​“Most peo­ple who got jobs here were just work­ing while they were actu­al­ly look­ing for bet­ter jobs some­where else. Many acci­dents in the port could have been avoid­ed if the work­ers weren’t so exhaust­ed. They go in at 7 a.m., and leave at 8 p.m., and then go and dri­ve or do some oth­er job.”

The port does have a high acci­dent rate, and two work­ers were killed a month apart at the end of last year. In one acci­dent, a crane lift­ing a con­tain­er hit a six-high stack of oth­er con­tain­ers that were being stored on the dock, right next to the ship. As they fell, one hit a 22-year-old man who’d been work­ing less than a month.

Cortez was called by the work­ers. On arrival he saw the crane oper­a­tor in shock and weep­ing. He stopped man­agers from inter­ro­gat­ing him until he got coun­sel­ing, and then told the com­pa­ny that all the work­ers in the ter­mi­nal had been trau­ma­tized and should be sent home. If they weren’t, he warned, the union itself would shut down the ter­mi­nal. In the end, man­age­ment sent the shift home with pay for the day.

When Cortez announced the agree­ment to the work­ers, ​“I could have been elect­ed pres­i­dent of Pana­ma that day,” he says.”It had nev­er hap­pened before.”

The new union con­tract estab­lished five com­mit­tees, the most impor­tant of which is safe­ty. ​“The chal­lenge is now to imple­ment this agree­ment and ensure the com­pa­ny abides by it,” empha­sizes SIN­TRA­PORSPA pres­i­dent Alber­to Ochoa. ​“Before, the com­pa­ny did what it pleased, and changed the hours, over­time, days off and wages — when­ev­er it want­ed. Now they know we’re not on our own, by our­selves. Com­pa­nies don’t want real unions because we open the eyes of the workers.”

Pana­ma Ports is a sub­sidiary of the Hong Kong-based Hutchin­son Port Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (HPH). Work­ers at the ter­mi­nal were trapped in a ​“yel­low” or com­pa­ny union there for many years. Ochoa and oth­er inde­pen­dent-mind­ed long­shore­men had a long his­to­ry of try­ing to change this, and final­ly orga­nized a new union: SIN­TRA­PORSPA. They col­lect­ed over 2,000 sig­na­tures on a peti­tion for recog­ni­tion and asked for a gov­ern­ment-admin­is­tered elec­tion to cer­ti­fy it as work­ers’ bar­gain­ing representative.

In bal­lot­ing last year, how­ev­er, the Min­istry of Labor claimed that 1,500 work­ers had vot­ed against SIN­TRA­PORSPA. Work­ers on the docks found this unbe­liev­able, since they knew how many votes they had lined up. They also knew, how­ev­er, that the Pres­i­dent of Pana­ma him­self, Juan Car­los Varela, is a part­ner in the law firm used by Pana­ma Ports, one that spe­cial­izes in help­ing com­pa­ny man­age­ment fight unions. The dock­work­ers chal­lenged the trans­paren­cy of the election.

“It was obvi­ous that we had the sup­port of the great major­i­ty of the work­ers, includ­ing those who belonged to the com­pa­ny union,” recalls Cortez. ​“Nev­er­the­less, when we went to the min­istry to protest, they did every­thing they could to stop us.”

Ochoa and Cortez appealed to the ILWU, whose head­quar­ters is in San Fran­cis­co. ILWU Inter­na­tion­al Vice-Pres­i­dent Ray Fami­lathe and Greg Mitre, pres­i­dent of the ILWU retirees in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, flew to Pana­ma City and met with the Min­is­ter of Labor, Luis Ernesto Car­les Rudy. They brought with them a let­ter signed by six U.S. Con­gress mem­bers, ask­ing for a rerun. The gov­ern­ment reluc­tant­ly agreed, and in a fair vote SIN­TRA­PORSPA won overwhelmingly.

“The sup­port from the ILWU was very effec­tive,” Cortez says.”The Pana­man­ian author­i­ties were nev­er con­cerned before about how they con­duct­ed them­selves with us. Pow­er­ful com­pa­nies, with the mon­ey at their dis­pos­al, got what­ev­er that mon­ey could buy.”

ILWU offi­cials pose with Pana­man­ian dock­work­ers. (David Bacon)

The impact of that sup­port was also felt in the sub­se­quent con­tract nego­ti­a­tions, which only took a month to arrive at agree­ment. In one meet­ing the com­pa­ny exec­u­tive pres­i­dent even told union nego­tia­tors that he was ​“very con­cerned” at the union’s grow­ing rela­tion­ship with the ILWU.

These expe­ri­ences led the Pana­man­ian dock union to become the newest mem­ber of the ILWU’s Pana­ma Divi­sion. The divi­sion was estab­lished in 2012, when sev­er­al hun­dred mem­bers of the Pana­ma Canal Pilots Union decid­ed to join the ILWU. The divi­sion has now grown to include 2580 Pana­ma Ports long­shore work­ers. Accord­ing to Capt. Rainiero Salas, the Pana­ma Canal Pilots’ Union sec­re­tary gen­er­al, ​“The Pana­ma Divi­sion is grow­ing as work­ers see what we can gain by work­ing togeth­er. It’s not going to stop here.” Adds Ochoa, ​“Unions in the ports and the Canal should get togeth­er so that we can speak with one voice, and get bet­ter ben­e­fits and respect for all workers.”

Pana­ma divi­sion lead­ers are also meet­ing with the union for dock­ers in Colon on the Atlantic side of the isth­mus, the Union of Work­ers at the Man­zanil­lo Inter­na­tion­al Ter­mi­nal. Like the work­ers at Pana­ma Ports, the dock­ers in Colon also rebelled against a for­mer union lead­er­ship they viewed as too close to the com­pa­ny. At MIT they elect­ed a new slate of offi­cers a few months ago.

The MIT ter­mi­nal is oper­at­ed by SSA Marine, a glob­al com­pa­ny head­quar­tered in Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton. Accord­ing to work­ers in Colon, con­tain­er crane oper­a­tors work 8‑hour days, for six days straight. For that, their pay starts at $854 a month, or about $4.27 per hour. Base pay for an expe­ri­enced long­shore work­er in SSA Marine’s home port of Seat­tle is $35.68 per hour.

The low wages on Pana­ma’s docks have a lot to do with the dif­fi­cul­ty work­ers face in form­ing mil­i­tant unions and nego­ti­at­ing con­tracts. But pover­ty is also a prod­uct of trade and eco­nom­ic poli­cies pushed by U.S. cor­po­ra­tions and the gov­ern­ment trade nego­tia­tors who rep­re­sent their interests.

The U.S. signed a free trade agree­ment with Pana­ma in 2009. In 2007 Pana­ma’s Nation­al Agrar­i­an Orga­ni­za­tion, the coun­try’s largest orga­ni­za­tion of farm­ers, wrote to the U.S. Con­gress, ask­ing it to stop the nego­ti­a­tions. In Pana­ma, it said, the agree­ment ​“was rat­i­fied by … a small sec­tor of Pana­man­ian elites.” It pre­dict­ed a huge dis­place­ment of farm­ers no longer able to com­pete with U.S. agri­cul­tur­al exports. They would then become either migrants leav­ing the coun­try, or unem­ployed peo­ple des­per­ate for work in the coun­try’s cities.

In Colon, dis­placed farm­ers have become work­ers in the Free Trade Zone, a stone’s throw from the har­bor and MIT ter­mi­nal. The zone is one of the world’s old­est, set up in 1946 when the Canal Zone was a de fac­to U.S. colony. Today over 300 most­ly-for­eign com­pa­nies run fac­to­ries that pay no munic­i­pal or local tax­es, no nation­al tax­es on invest­ment, and no duties on prod­ucts they export. Work­ers earn $10 – 15 a day — even less than longshoremen.

“In this coun­try,” says Ramiro Cortez, ​“there is no mid­dle class. There is just the upper class and the low­er class.” While wages are low, Pana­ma is sec­ond only to Hong Kong as a home for multi­na­tion­al firms’ sub­sidiaries — many cre­at­ed with the sole pur­pose of evad­ing taxes.

The U.S. gave up the Canal in 1977, in an agree­ment nego­ti­at­ed between Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter and one of Pana­ma’s most pro­gres­sive pres­i­dents, Gen­er­al Omar Tor­ri­jos. Nev­er­the­less, U.S. influ­ence in Pana­man­ian pol­i­tics is still strong. The U.S. invad­ed Pana­ma in 1989 to ​“arrest” then-Pres­i­dent Manuel Nor­ie­ga for drug deal­ing. Hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Pana­ma City’s poor­est bar­rio, El Cho­ril­lo, died after it was bom­bard­ed by naval ves­sels. The seafront neigh­bor­hood was then assault­ed by troops.

Resent­ment against the U.S. still rever­ber­ates. Eigh­teen years after El Cho­ril­lo burned, a U.S.-led naval exer­cise used the Canal to prac­tice repelling a hypo­thet­i­cal ter­ror­ist attack. Three Pana­man­ian sailors drowned, and vocal protests followed.

The ILWU in Pana­ma does not direct­ly chal­lenge the rever­ber­a­tions of that old colo­nial rela­tion­ship. But it does rep­re­sent the inter­ests of work­ers by advo­cat­ing pro­gres­sive poli­cies on wages, trade and labor rights, while effec­tive­ly defend­ing work­ers on the job.

Over the past year pilots have fought, with the divi­sion’s sup­port, to ensure that the huge ships that pass through the canal every day are oper­at­ed safe­ly. The Canal Author­i­ty has launched a huge expan­sion project, build­ing new locks capa­ble of han­dling giant post-Pana­max con­tain­er ships car­ry­ing up to 13,000 con­tain­ers. The union has crit­i­cized the gov­ern­ment for not work­ing close­ly with pilots to design work rules and pro­ce­dures for safe­ly han­dling these larg­er ships in the new locks. It is espe­cial­ly con­cerned over a new uni­lat­er­al gov­ern­ment direc­tive that, for the first time, seeks to have ships pass each oth­er in the nar­row Cule­bra Cut. Pre­vi­ous­ly, ships trav­el­ing in oppo­site direc­tions have wait­ed, so that only one ship at a time tra­vers­es the cut.

The gov­ern­ment says the cut has been widened, but pilots says there is no room for error, and the con­se­quences of ships hit­ting each oth­er would be dis­as­trous. Last Octo­ber Capt. Salas crit­i­cized the gov­ern­ment pub­licly over this issue. ​“It seems very odd that the most expe­ri­enced peo­ple mov­ing ships through this high­ly impor­tant sys­tem have been com­plete­ly ignored by its gov­ern­ing author­i­ty,” he charged. ​“Pilots’ most crit­i­cal mis­sion is ship safe­ty, yet we’ve not been consulted.”

Pana­man­ian port and mar­itime unions are also con­cerned at the gov­ern­men­t’s efforts to decer­ti­fy the union for the canal’s tug­boat cap­tains. The same legal tech­ni­cal­i­ties used against the cap­tains, they fear, could be used to attack the rep­re­sen­ta­tion rights of oth­er unions. That would under­mine dock unions just as they are start­ing to change the basic liv­ing stan­dards of workers.

“Our main objec­tive as a union is to make a dif­fer­ence in the eco­nom­ic sta­tus of those who have earned the least — the long­shore­men,” Ochoa declares. ​“I’m not say­ing this new con­tract will give us a wage that can pay for every­thing, but it’s a lot bet­ter than what we had before​.As a union we will keep strug­gling to win bet­ter con­di­tions, espe­cial­ly eco­nom­ic ones.”