Port workers uneasy over tariff rollback

Labor Day may not exactly be a day to celebrate for some 10,000 stevedores and other workers in the country’s seaports, including Manila’s North and South Harbors, if President Arroyo heeds the call of local shipping giants to recall the implementation of a 10-percent hike in stevedoring and arrastre charges already approved last year.

Benjamin Akol, president of the Philippine Chamber of Arrastre and Stevedoring Operators (PCASO), said port workers are turning restive over the "unreasonable" demand of domestic shipping operators, importers, and exporters for a rollback as it will mean likely cutback in the workers’ income, benefits, incentives, overtime pay and skills training opportunities. Port workers were pinning their hopes for better benefits on higher port collection that can result from the rate increase.

"But it’s going to be bad news for labor on Labor Day should the President give in to the pressure being mounted by shipping companies and the lobbying of her former chief of staff and now Congressman Willie Villarama," said Akol.

At the very extreme, a rollback of cargo-handling and stevedoring fees will mean loss of jobs for thousands of port workers, he warned. A rollback will also result in millions of revenue losses for the government, which is already saddled with a mounting budget deficit, he added.

Manuel Arias, vice president of the National Federation of Labor Unions (NAFLU), said the government may be faced with more labor problems than it can handle if it agrees to the demands of domestic shipping firms which are the first to benefit from modern and better port facilities and services. The labor leader also scored former Sulpicio Lines president Vicente Gambito, under whose watch the world witnessed the worst maritime disaster in the 20th century – the sinking of M/V Doña Paz, "pretending to advance port modernization by opposing the hike on port charges."

Gambito, who claimed to be the spokesman of the Coalition for Port Modernization, was among those strongly lobbying for a rollback of the approved port tariff rate increase, a move which was seen to benefit only the shipping companies.

A 10-percent increase in port charges was supposed to have taken effect in January. The hike was approved on Oct. 10, 2000.