PANAMA'S CANAL PAIN

摘要

Panama's canal expansion programme has not been without its problems. Indeed, it has been bedevilled by protracted difficulties that have seen its original completion date of October 2014 extended a number of times, to the current deadline of April 2016. Even that is now uncertain following the recent threat of new strike action by construction workers at a time when the project was said to 93 per cent complete. Workers represented by the National Union of Workers of Construction and Similar Industries (SUNTRACS) had threatened to walk off the job in early August after claiming that the contractor, European consortium Grupo Unidos por el Canal (GUPC), was failing to live up to wage increase obligations agreed through a collective bargaining process in October 2014.