“French ports will be at a 95% shutdown”: dockers announce a massive strike on October 30

French ports will be immobilized on Friday October 30 by a 24-hour strike, at the call of the main dockers' union, the national federation of ports and docks CGT, which represents nearly 90% of employees in the sector in France. “French ports will be at a 95% shutdown” on Friday, indicated Tony Hautbois, general secretary of the CGT dockers, whose representation is 95% among dockers loading and unloading goods, and 87.5% among all port handling employees at the national level. The call was initially launched in a European context by the European dockworkers council (EDC) and at the international level by other dockers' federations, notably in Turkey and India, to say no to the ongoing war and militarization of ports, he said.

At the French level, the CGT dockers contest the "militarization of installations under the leadership of the European Commission" and oppose "the orientations" of the Lecornu government's draft budget which "destroy our solidarity systems". The CGT is particularly opposed to the deregulation of jobs through the automation of handling operations in ports. A movement against the “war economy” In France, 14.

000 port workers, including some 7,500 dockers are affected by the October 30 appeal which affects the ports of Boulogne, Brest, Dunkirk, Calais, La Rochelle, Le Havre, Rouen, Paris (Haropa), Lorient, Marseille, Roscoff, Bayonne, Bastia, Bordeaux, Réunion, Nice, Ajaccio, Saint-Nazaire, Port-Vendres, Saint-Malo, Cherbourg, Sète, Toulon and Fos sur Mer. Internationally, the dockers' unions of Spain, Greece, Slovenia, Cyprus, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Germany, are also called to join this "historic" day of mobilization, notes the CGT in its press release.

Representatives of dockers' unions from 35 European ports signed a joint declaration on May 19 in Istanbul refusing to allow dockers "to become a link in the chain of wars." "Ports, sea routes, railways, warehouses, logistics and the entire transport chain are being transformed more and more openly into war infrastructures" affirmed this declaration, castigating the "war economy" being created in ports which "belong to the people and the workers" and are not "bases belonging to NATO, nor to the United States nor to the European Union, nor to the shipowners or monopoly groups.

Machine-translated from French