docks

Hundreds of workers employed by the Dover Harbour Board (DHB) are to take strike action against plans to outsource their jobs. The ballot organised by Unite saw 83.5% of votes returned in support.

More than 2,000 workers want their salaries increased to $800 a month from as low as $240. Head of the workers union, Manuel Sa said the strike would go on indefinitely until workers could negotiate directly with the country's minister of transportation.

On the morning of December 14 1970, thousands of workers from the Gdansk shipyards downed tools and began marching into the city. Their objective was the local regional office of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), the party that had ruled the People's Republic of Poland since 1952. The protestors were met by police units and fighting between the two sides lasted into the evening.

High-speed international rail services in and out of the country to France, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands were cancelled and picketing disrupted the port of Antwerp.

Workers were protesting in advance of the government's 2009 budget to demand action on inflation and the rising cost of living.

Foreword
The recent struggle in and around the shipyards of Puerto Real, Spain, in both workplace and community, against threatened closure witnessed the anarcho-syndicalist union CNT playing both a prominent and decisive role.

DP World - Europe's Eastern gateway blocked:

Strike in the docks of Constanta

The workers stopped working at midnight Thursday, calling for increased wages in keeping with the current prices of essentials and cost of living.

The Pacific Maritime Association has asked the National Labor Relations Board to file charges against the union. The employers’ move, initiated in late May, comes in the midst of ongoing contract talks.

The Ecological Challenge: Three Revolutions are Necessary
by Alternative Libertaire

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union declared the day as "a day for union business" for workers at all 29 ports on the west coast. This may be the beginning of a record setting anti-war action, since the vast majority of supplies and munitions for the American government's current wars are shipped from the 29 ports on the West Coast. All 29 were closed today.

Sixty-seven vessels including thirty-nine tankers stranded at the harbor's entrance. Government officials, port managers and union representatives are yet to tally the costs of the strike. A 17-day walkout last year in Marseille alone cost Manutention Generale Mediterraneenne, the port's biggest cargo- handler, €1.5 million ($2.4 million).

A boat carrying an arms shipment destined for Zimbabwe is anchored at the South African port of Durban. However the South African Transport Workers' Union has already announced that their members will not offload any of the cargo, nor will any of their truckers transport it.

The pension reform raises the retirement age for women to 65 and workers in hazardous industries will have to work an extra two years. Many accuse the conservative government of going back on pre-election promises not to cut pension rights.

The government's reforms would mean the merging of pension funds and increasing the pension age for some workers. The government, however, has not made public any details on the size of savings that will accrue from the reforms. The trade unions have also argued that the current pension system could survive if bosses were made to pay their contributions.

The strikes have virtually paralysed the country as workers nation-wide seek to defend their pensions and protest against a government that has broken its promises.

The call for a strike which could paralyse the country comes as Italy debates workplace safety following a fire last month at a ThyssenKrupp steel plant in Turin which killed seven workers.

Labor federations CGIL, CISL and UIL said in a statement they "strongly protest following incidents which reached unbearable levels in 2007 and, unfortunately, continue".

Just outside of Paris at the Areva TD factory in Montrouge, 89 striking workers have been occupying and blockading the factory for four days.The movement began after management announced plans to close the factory, which produces electrical transformers. Workers are demanding large compensation payments, management is currently refusing to negotiate.

"The unity maintained during our difficult strike [in 1976] taught us that this unity was too precious to be destroyed by endless sloganeering and sectarianism. We understood that our decisions could not be delegated to union bureaucrats.

Mediation between the Maritime Union and Port Company is taking place currently, in an effort to stop moves by the Port of Napier to contract out stevedoring work which threatens 25 permanent and 60 casual jobs, with workers to be thrown on the scrap heap just before Christmas.