Why Katoen Natie Wants Montevideo's Port Declared "Essential" — and Uruguay's Government Won't Go There Yet
The Briefing:
- On Thursday, September 10, Terminal Cuenca del Plata (TCP), majority-owned by Belgian logistics firm Katoen Natie, formally asked Uruguay's executive branch to declare containerized cargo services at the Port of Montevideo essential.
- The government had already chosen a different path on Tuesday night, September 8: a resolution giving the company and the dockworkers' union 72 hours to agree on "minimum services" — a deadline that lapses today, Friday.
- Thursday's negotiating session ended without a deal on either the labor contract or the minimum-guard scheme, and the SUPRA-affiliated union warned it would take its case to the International Labour Organization (ILO) if the government declares essentiality anyway.
- Executive branch sources told Uruguayan outlets that officials are drafting a mandatory minimum-staffing rule that stops short of formal essentiality but, by their own account, would work in a similar way.
Uruguay's main container terminal is back at the center of a political standoff. Terminal Cuenca del Plata, controlled by the Belgian multinational Katoen Natie, sent a formal petition to the Labor Ministry on Thursday, later forwarded to the presidency and the Transport Ministry, asking that container-loading operations be classified as essential services. It's a notable shift: until now, the push for essentiality had come almost entirely from opposition politicians rather than the operator itself.
Months of friction before the formal request
Bargaining over a new labor agreement between TCP and the SUPRA-affiliated dockworkers' union has dragged on since late May, and opposition figures say it has produced a full month of stoppages within the past eight. A surprise strike on Saturday, September 5, again halted the terminal, just five days before the essentiality request landed. The dispute involves roughly 550 terminal workers, at a facility that is 80% owned by Katoen Natie and 20% by Uruguay's National Port Administration.
On Monday, facing questions from opposition senators, Labor Minister Juan Castillo — who led the dockworkers' union himself before taking office—argued the dispute is confined to a single operator rather than the port as a whole, even while acknowledging that TCP handles most of the containerized cargo moving through Montevideo.
The government's countermove: minimum services first
Hours after another walkout on Tuesday, and just as the terminal resumed operations that afternoon, the government got ahead of Katoen Natie's request. That same night, Castillo and Transport Minister Lucía Etcheverry signed a resolution that stopped short of declaring essentiality but ordered the company and the union to agree on a "minimum services" arrangement within 72 hours of that Tuesday-night meeting. "The government made its decision, it has signed the resolution," Etcheverry said, adding that the Executive would set the terms itself if the two sides couldn't. The next day, Castillo acknowledged three or four differences still remained and urged both sides to close the deal by Friday.
Why officials keep avoiding the word "essential"
The government's reluctance rests on its reading of International Labour Organization guidance, which reserves essential-service status for activities whose interruption would directly endanger health, safety, or life — a bar ports don't automatically clear. Economy Minister Gabriel Oddone had already said in July that an essentiality decree should apply only to extreme, narrowly defined circumstances, not a dispute confined to one terminal. It amounts, as one Uruguayan outlet's analysis put it, to a way of sidestepping the political cost of a formal decree without shutting the door on it entirely.
The union won't budge: "We'll go to the ILO"
Thursday's tripartite meeting collapsed without agreement. SUPRA president Álvaro Reinaldo said the union had sweetened its offer to a three-year contract, but the real sticking point is the size of the mandatory minimum guard: workers are offering to staff 25% of the usual machinery, while the company wants 50% — a level Reinaldo argues amounts to near-normal operations rather than a genuine floor. Asked about essentiality, he was blunt: it's unworkable under ILO doctrine, he said, warning the union would escalate to the ILO in Geneva if the government imposed it anyway.
In parliament, opposition senator Javier García keeps pushing for a decree. "The government hasn't grasped how serious this is," he said, claiming some shipping lines were weighing fewer calls at Montevideo because of the repeated stoppages. The National Party's leadership went further, framing the dispute as a matter that has outgrown any single sector and now carries national weight.
What's next: the clock runs out, and a middle path emerges
With talks stalled, President Yamandú Orsi stopped short of closing the door on essentiality, even as he insisted conditions weren't there yet: "It's a possibility that's always on the table; today, Thursday, I don't think the conditions are met," he said Thursday afternoon. Hours later, executive branch sources told Uruguayan broadcaster Subrayado that officials are preparing a mandatory minimum-guard requirement for terminal workers instead — a rule that wouldn't formally be an essentiality decree but would, in the government's own telling, work much like one. Trade press covering South American shipping has already flagged the dispute as an indefinite strike weighing on Montevideo's container throughput. With the 72-hour window closing on Friday and no confirmed deal between the parties, how the dispute at Uruguay's largest container terminal resolves now rests with the Executive.
