European-wide dock workers strike against port deregulation

Police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse the demonstrators, who threw firecrackers and hurled stones at the parliament building, breaking some 100 square metres of window glass. Delegations from all over Europe were in attendance. Apart from large contingents from France and Belgium, 1,700 Spanish dockers were on the streets of Strasbourg as well as port workers from Germany, Poland and Great Britain.

The protest, called by the European Federation of Transport Workers in order to put pressure on members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to vote against the bill, was backed by a massively supported strike that hit many European countries and brought ports to a standstill. The demonstration and the strikes in the different countries were supported by both Socialist Party and Communist Party-dominated unions.

In France, the Autonomous Port of Marseilles was totally paralysed with some 10 ships held up on the quayside. The Atlantic sea ports of Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Rouen, Brest and Saint-Nazaire were totally or largely at a standstill. The entire workforce of over 2,000 dockers launched a 48-hour strike in France’s second largest port, Le Havre. In the northern port of Dunkirk there was a partial stoppage. Six hundred dockers in the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion struck in unity with their European counterparts.

In Spain, the Socialist Party aligned UGT (General Labour Union) and the Communist Party-backed CC.OO (Workers’ Commissions) mobilised for the protests. The spokesman of the UGT reported that in 28 ports the strike was virtually 100 percent solid. Loading and unloading operations stopped in the port of Barcelona and Tarragona, Spain’s main grain import port.

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