Port Authority suspends hiring as labor negotiations stall

The Port Authority of Nueva Singapur announced a recruitment freeze Friday affecting 120 planned positions across cargo-handling, vessel-coordination, and berth-operations roles. The freeze, effective immediately, follows breakdown of contract negotiations with the Regional Stevedore Union over wage structures for workers assigned to the Authority's newly automated deep-water berth. The union and the Authority have been in talks since March over how to classify and compensate workers whose roles have been partially displaced by automation technology installed in the past eighteen months.

The core dispute centres on wage-scale placement for workers transitioning from traditional stevedore roles to "berth-coordination" positions—hybrid roles that combine equipment monitoring, vessel-movement coordination, and exception-handling for containers that cannot be processed by automated systems. The union proposes placing these workers at the stevedore scale (52 florins per hour, plus benefits). The Port Authority proposes a new classification, "technical stevedore," at 44 florins per hour, arguing that the reduced physical labour justifies lower compensation. Negotiations have produced no movement in six weeks.

Port Authority chief operations officer Javier Cortés told the bureau Friday that the freeze was necessary to avoid hiring workers into an uncertain compensation framework. "We cannot bring people into roles whose wage category is under dispute," he said. "If we hire at the technical stevedore scale and the union wins a grievance, we face retroactive liability. If we hire at the stevedore scale and the Authority's budget cannot sustain it, we have a different problem." The freeze affects both new hires and internal promotions. Two workers who had been approved for advancement to berth-coordination roles were notified Friday that their promotions were suspended pending contract resolution.