Employees of Mexican carrier Jaguar Transportation — a subsidiary of bankrupt Celadon Group — continue to protest unpaid wages by blocking the company’s Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, terminal in order to delay the removal of trucks, according to reports.
“In Nuevo Laredo, hundreds — of personnel who worked at the Jaguar company maintain their peaceful protest and remain at the facilities of the transport line, waiting to receive their settlement and savings fund,” according to Mexican news outlet Lider Web Informativo.
As of Dec. 12, the workers had not received a response from Celadon officials, according to the report. Jaguar employee’s said they will prevent the removal of trucks until they are paid money owed to them by Celadon.
Jaguar Transportation was a wholly owned subsidiary of Celadon Group, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Dec. 9.
Jaguar Transportation employed around 600 people and included 450 trucks in Mexico. The company employed around 200 drivers in Nuevo Laredo, along with some 200 employees at its facility in Monterrey, Mexico.
The Mexican cities of San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Puebla, and Guadalajara, were also locations of Jaguar Transportation branches.
When Celadon informed its employees in Mexico the company was shutting down, drivers at Celadon’s Nuevo Laredo terminal blocked the entrance to keep 150 trucks and 150 trailers, out of fear of not receiving payment, according to Mexican news outlet El Mañana.
Logistics professionals in Mexico also said Celadon’s closure could affect as many as 600 daily cross-border shipments.
Regions that could be affected most include Mexico’s western states, as well as “those that go down from the United States to the Mexican Bajio area, for the automotive industry,” said José Antonio Sánchez, director of the Logistics Committee of the National Council of the Maquiladora and Export Manufacturing Industry (INDEX).
“[Of course] we will have delays in product deliveries,” Sánchez said in an interview with Mexican news outlet T21.
Sánchez said the shipment of electronic goods manufactured in the Mexican state of Jalisco could be another export affected by Celadon’s closure.
“A specific case is the electronics industry concentrated in the west of the country, mainly in Jalisco, where about a hundred companies account for 51% of exports from that state and most have contracts with local carriers that, in turn, are related to Celadon,” Sánchez said.
