The “Dry,” Deaf and Mute Port

Business Is Always for the “Comrades”

The “Dry,” Deaf and Mute Port
Business Is Always for the “Comrades”
By Dr. Nelson Jorge Mosco Castellano

The Noble Art of Getting Paid While Staring at the Horizon: A Practical Manual for Not Working at the Port and Living to Tell the Tale
Few images in the modern economy are as moving as that of the dockworker who, with noble self-sacrifice, decides not to lift a single finger while his bank account, and that of the union owner, experience a mystical blossoming.
At the Port of Montevideo, coastal socialism has reached such a refined evolutionary peak that ships, cargo and the damned obligation to produce have become annoying details, almost in poor taste, that spoil the landscape of paid inertia.
Because let us be honest: what kind of savage capitalist believes that a salary should be paid in exchange for work?
Such an antiquated idea deserves to be incinerated at the stake of union solidarity, with some future employer continuing to finance the idleness.

The Arithmetic of Guaranteed Rest: How 13 or 25 Daily Wages Buy Peace of Mind

Under the tender auspices of Group 13 of the Wage Councils, the material reality of port workers is so thoroughly protected that it is dizzying.
So that you, dear taxpayer or entrepreneur with a martyr complex for productivity, may understand how much it costs to maintain this dockside aristocracy in its sacred right to lethargy, here are the current guaranteed nominal monthly floors, whether for 13 or 21 daily wages depending on the degree of exemption from fatigue established by the agreement, without prejudice to exceeding them according to the days actually worked:
By working an average of 21 to 26 daily shifts per month, including additional payments, an operator at the Port of Montevideo reaches nominal salaries exceeding UYU 140,000 to UYU 180,000 per month, with those in the highest seniority and technical supervisory ranks exceeding those amounts.
They also receive: Productivity bonuses: direct bonuses based on the number of movements. Rotation and night work, which add 20% to the basic daily wage.
To these amounts, of course, are added medals of merit for breathing near a container, seniority bonuses and rewards for watching the seagulls go by.
A true insult to poverty, informality and unemployment, willingly financed by the system.

The Sublime Epic of “No Ships, But There Is Money”

The great strategic genius of port unionism —applauded from the ideological catacombs of the PCU and observed with tender and complicit inaction by an MPP Executive Branch more concerned with not angering its real bosses than with governing— consists of having discovered the secret of the economic philosopher’s stone: separating wages from reality.
Sharing surplus value without adding the surplus.
Why make the effort to ensure that the port is efficient, attracts investment, moves more cargo and generates genuine wealth?
What a provincial vision!
The true revolutionary vanguard consists of decreeing that, even if not so much as an inflatable raft docks in the bay, the dockworker has the right to religiously collect his metaverse daily wage.
If there are ships, one works and gets paid; if there are no ships, one gets paid more for not working.
It is a perfect business in which entrepreneurial risk is absorbed by the fool who produces, pays and complains about the high cost of services at our Port, while the fixed income is enjoyed by the comrade freed from the chains of effort.

The Solidarity of Blocking the Door in the Name of the “Workers”

Of course, this entire epic of subsidized idleness comes wrapped in the purest cellophane of the “defense of workers’ rights.”
A beautiful piece of rhetoric!
Under the slogan of protecting the working class, port services are shut down every so often with strategic strikes because some leader woke up with his boots twisted.
And this is where the farce reaches Shakespearean proportions: while ensuring that the union bosses receive their full salaries for staying home playing PlayStation or doing patriotic duty at the party committee, they methodically block everyone else from being able to earn their bread, those who actually try to earn it by the sweat of their brow; and they do not allow them to.
The independent truck driver, the customs broker who lives on commission, the small logistics entrepreneur and the fourth-tier casual worker who needs the wheel to keep turning in order to put noodles on the table can fend for themselves however they can.
Who told those fools that one can survive by working rather than by extorting?
The self-proclaimed defenders of the vulnerable do not hesitate for a second to set fire to the productive chain of the entire country, suffocating foreign trade and condemning the non-“comrade” neighbor to hunger, all in order to safeguard their sacred feudal right to receive extra pay for inactivity.

Conclusion

Thank goodness we have such enlightened unions to remind us that work is a vulgarity belonging to savage capitalism.
At the Uruguayan port, the slogan is clear: the future belongs to those who manage to convince the State that the highest human aspiration is to collect a handsome salary for vegetating elegantly, while the rest of the country applauds on its knees the beautiful tragedy of its own ruin.
Cheers, comrades! May no one take away what you have danced, and not worked.
And when the reality of unemployment strikes them, it will be back to the militant demand to tax the exploiting investors even more… if, as has been happening in communist lands, any of them are still left.

Port wage guarantees
Unionism and productivity
Strikes and the productive chain

Continue reading in Global Order and Geopolitics