Argentina government intervenes in ports strike

Unions representing workers in Argentina’s strategically important oilseed industry have taken industrial action in a dispute over pay. Now, the government has stepped in to resolve the dispute, which is also affecting the export of grain from the country’s ports.

A legal order from Buenos Aires requires two striking unions to suspend their action, to allow for mediation.

Their strike has brought much of the country’s port infrastructure to a halt. That has impacted significantly on Argentina’s economy. Such is the level of disruption that the government has taken the radical step of issuing an order to suspend the action for fifteen days. One of the two unions has so far agreed to the order.

Return to work to allow for talks

Argentina’s rampant inflation is no joke for the workers in the oilseed processing factories attached to most ports. With prices rising by more than 250 per cent annually, pay is a big issue. In the face of their wages diminishing in real terms, two unions involved called out their members on an indefinite strike on Tuesday of last week (6 August).

The complex relationship between the country’s oilseed industry, and the logistics of port operations, means that most ports also host a processing plant. Action affecting the processing plants effectively cripples the ports, and with it the country’s other main agricultural export, the grain harvest.

Port operations have moved on from the historical days of the old harbour in Buenos Aires (pictured). However, some of those historical challenges still remain for Argentina.

The libertarian government of President Javier Milei, still in his first year of office, has come under pressure to resolve the issue. To that end, the government has ordered the two unions to suspend their action for just over two weeks. So far, according to the English language Buenos Aires Herald newspaper, the Oilseed Workers’ and Employees’ Union (SOEA) has complied.

Its members returned to work on Monday (12 August) to allow negotiations to continue, and effectively restart grain shipments from Argentine ports. The government has previously intervened in industrial relations, calling a halt to a container terminal dispute in Buenos Aires in 2022.

Losses and diminished buying power

The Labour Secretariat, the government department responsible for industrial relations, urged the unions and management to resume talks as a matter of national urgency.

“[The Labour Secretariat] exhorts the parties to the conflict to maintain the best predisposition and openness to negotiate over the topics about which they have differences,” said their official statement, as reported in the Argentine media. “Thereby contribute to social peace and improving the framework of labour relations at the heart of the activity concerned.”

The strike has been particularly damaging for the South American country. Bulk agricultural exports fill the top four ranks in Argentina’s economy (followed by automotive trucks). Such is the importance of agricultural produce that, earlier this year, the government proposed a major new port, specifically to service the grain trade.

With maritime trade badly affected, the country has been losing around USD ten million per day, according to national media. However, for ordinary workers, the effects are just as real. In the fifteen days of the suspension, while talks continue, the buying power of an Argentinian wage may have diminished by around twenty per cent.