“We Are Victims of Trafficking In Our Own Country” Poti Port’s Employees Claim

Inga Gvasalia, Poti

Ten-day strike of Poti Port workers finished with agreement and every employee returned to their working places. The agreement was reached after Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Giorgi Kvirikashvili and chairman of the Georgian Confederation of Trade Unions Irakli Petriashvili joined negotiations.

After four-hour negotiations with strikers it was settled that new administration will increase employees’ salaries at 20%, and will reimburse salaries of the period when workers were on strike. Other problems will be discussed by a special commission created by prime-minister.

During the strike director general of the Port Joseph Crawl resigned and Spin Davidson replaced him on the position. Port employees negatively evaluated Crawl’s period in the port.

The port employees said the situation worsened at Poti Port terminal when APM Terminali entered there. They promised workers to improve working conditions but everything happened in the opposite. On October 25, workers held first warning strike and sent their requests to the port administration that were not satisfied. So, it was followed by permanent strike. As a result, Poti Port was completely paralyzed during ten days.

The port employees protested violation of their rights and requested improved labor code, increased salaries, solution of nutrition problems, medical insurance, responsibility of the shift-managers who insulted and inhumanly treated employees of Terminals #14 and # 4 and restitution of fired employees of the port to their working places. Majority of strikers worked in reserve brigades and as they told us, they did not hold labor contracts. The problem is that workers from reserve brigades do the same job as staff-members but receive lower salaries. One of them said his salary for 11-hour non-stop work was just 0.81 lari (0.5 USD).

The fired employees of the port also joined strikers who started hunger-strike in front of the administration building. These people were fired on the ground of reorganization in the port last year. After Poti majoritarian MP Eka Beselia from the Georgian Dream met strikers, they stopped hunger strike though continued strike. Several days before their protest, Port workers set up trade union. Representatives of the Georgian Confederation of Trade Unions and 50-member delegation of Adjara Naval Trade Unions arrived in Poti to express their solidarity with strikers. Despite many requests of protesters, nobody met them from the Port’s administration. Instead, Joseph Crawl went to Tbilisi and proudly stated at the press-conference together with Padi Asli [foreign businessman running business in Georgia] that he had satisfied part of strikers’ requests and increased their salaries at 40%. The figure sounds impressive for those people who do not know amount of initial salary. It was 40% of 0.81 lari. However, Port’s workers claimed that Crawl was lying.

After the press-conference, second negotiation failed with the Port’s administration because the latter offered minimal compromises that did not satisfy strikers and they left the meeting in protest. According to our source of information, this strike created serious problems for the port’s administration. Owners of ships and cargoes received serious damage by paralyzed port and they demanded Crawl to resolve their problems but he could not or did not do anything. People, who participated in several negotiations with former director general, said that head of human resources department Lela Kvantaliani rules everything in the port instead Crawl; the strikers claim she is a close friend of former Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili’s wife. Workers said Crawl responded to them in accordance to the mimics of Lela Kvantaliani. 

“Lela Kvantaliani’s monthly salary is 18 000 lari (more than 10 000 USD). She and other senior officials of the Poti Port live in luxurious hotels of Batumi instead Poti. They go to Batumi to have dinner and Port reimburses all their accommodation and nutrition expenses. In parallel to it, they pay meager salaries in exchange of our heavy job and we should not even protest it. We should also be happy with Kvantaliani and Crawl’s luxurious life. It is not job; we are victims of trafficking in our own country. At last, we defeated the government which made us slaves. We hope for the new government but they also have so many problems that we do not know when they find time for our problems. First of all, they should amend the Labor Code and every investor shall be reqeusted to respect citizen of Georgia properly and not treat us like slaves. Saakashvili did not care about it but we hope Ivanishvili will. He loves Georgia and Georgian people and we hope he will protect our rights,” port’s workers said.

Strikers petitioned to the minister of economy with the request of Kvantaliani’s resignation: “Please take Kvantaliani away from here and we will manage to better cooperate with foreigners. If this woman had not worked in the port, we would not have gone on strike and faced these problems. Before, Arab investors ran the port and we had perfect salaries and they treated us properly. Everything went wrong after Kvantaliani interfered in this business.”

Humanrights.ge tried to get Lela Kvantaliani’s comments on the accusations against her but she did not answer our phone calls.