Belgian Katoen Natie, with presence in Europe, Latin America and the United States and Asia, operates the Montevideo Port Container Terminal Cuenca del Plata (TCP). Not a regular FERRERE client, it turned to FERRERE for this high stakes collective labor dispute.

In the course of a labor conflict, TCP took the unprecedented decision to denounce a Uruguayan collective agreement based on the union’s breach of the “peace clause” (given that strikes were called in two instances without first exhausting the negotiation stages). The parties agreed to bring the dispute before an ad hoc Arbitral Tribunal.

TCP instructed FERRERE to act as counsel in the arbitration. Obtaining a favorable award was essential for TCP as it would allow for negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement, with better terms than the original one.

In this leading case, which is expected to have far reaching effects in a complex and hot area of Uruguayan law, the Arbitral Tribunal ruled that TCP proved the union’s breach of the peace clause and that this breach itself justified the denunciation of the collective agreement. The Tribunal accepted FERRERE’s arguments that civil rules on breach of contracts are applicable to a breach of a collective bargaining agreement.