No loading or unloading planned: dockers on strike this Friday to protest against the government budget

French ports will be at a standstill or almost this Friday. The National Federation of Ports and Docks CGT, which represents nearly 90% of employees in the sector, called for a 24-hour strike to protest against certain budgetary measures. On Friday, “French ports will be at a 95% shutdown,” the general secretary of the CGT dockers, Tony Hautbois, told AFP.

The union represents 95% of dockworkers, who load and unload goods, as well as 87.5% of all port handling employees nationally. “Increase in the minimum wage” and solidarity with “youth” “Most terminals in France will not operate for 24 hours on Friday,” confirmed to AFP the general delegate of the Union of French Ports, Jean-Frédéric Laurent. These ports handled 330 million tonnes of goods in 2025, or 7 to 8% of the European total.

Some 14,000 port workers, including 7,500 dockers, are affected by the strike call in Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Le Havre, Rouen, Paris (Haropa), Cherbourg, Saint-Malo, Roscoff, Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Port-Vendres, Sète, Fos-sur-Mer, Marseille, Toulon, Nice, Bastia, Ajaccio and Reunion.

The dockers' union is contesting measures in the French government's draft budget which, according to it, "destroy our solidarity systems". In a press release on Wednesday, he announced that he was also joining the national call for a strike on November 5, launched by the CGT and all the major union centers in the private and public sectors. The workers are demanding "an increase in the minimum wage", "salary increases and not non-contributory bonuses", and affirm that they are mobilizing to defend "youth", "the future of the public education service", social security, hospitals and retirees.

A European movement against the militarization of ports Initially, the first call for a strike for Friday was launched within a European framework, by the European Dockworkers Council (EDC), and at the international level by other dockers' federations, notably in Turkey and India. Union representatives from 35 European ports signed a joint declaration on May 19 in Istanbul to refuse that dockworkers “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 infrastructure,” the statement said.

European unions are thus opposing a draft European regulation to promote "military mobility", by facilitating the transit of defense equipment via civilian transport infrastructures.

Machine-translated from French