Several industrial ports in France, in particular those of Marseille and Le Havre, were affected on Wednesday February 7 by a strike by dockers of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) seeking recognition of their arduous work in order to obtain better early retirement .
Hundreds of dockers from the Fos-sur-Mer basins (Bouches-du-Rhône), an integral part of the “grand maritime port of Marseille” (GPMM), one of the largest in France, gathered at mid-morning in front of the sub-prefecture of Istres where a delegation was received. Wearing red CGT vests, there were a thousand of them according to the union, 450 according to the prefecture. As a result of the social movement, “the loading and unloading of boats is experiencing a delay of a few hours in the Fos-sur-Mer basins,” the port of Marseille-Fos told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
In Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), another major French port, the docks were empty at Port 2000 and no loading or unloading operations from container ships were taking place, an AFP journalist noted. Around ten fires were lit in the port area and access blocked. Still in Seine-Maritime, 150 CGT dockers are on strike in Rouen, out of a total of 210 dockers, and have been blocking access to two sites on the left bank for six hours, including that of the Beuzelin cereal producer.
In Lorient (Morbihan), all the dockers, around twenty, were also on strike, as were the port staff (mainly crane operators and mechanics). “There’s not a crane running today. It risks getting tougher as long as there is no response” from the government, warned Sébastien Léon, CGT union delegate at the Brest Bretagne port company where around a hundred people stopped work for the day, but without blocking the entrance to the port.
Request for consideration of arduousness
“We are blocking the ports in France first so that the government's pension reform does not apply to us and takes into account the arduousness of our work, as the Minister of Transport at the time Clément had committed to. Beaune and President Macron in 2022 when he was campaigning,” explained Christophe Claret, CGT general secretary of the dockers of the Gulf of Fos-sur-Mer.
“Given our working conditions, it is not acceptable that we work two more years when we are forced to work staggered hours, on weekends, when many people suffer from musculoskeletal disorders and when we are dealing with asbestos transported in boats,” he added.
Thanks to a sector agreement, dockers can validate their entire career by leaving four years before the legal age which, from 58 years old, was raised to 60 years old for them following the application of the pension reform driven by the French government last year.
The dockers also want the government to “invest 10 billion euros in port infrastructure so that French ports do not fall behind their Italian and Spanish neighbors”, demanding that “import-export remains the main activity of [ these] industrial ports,” according to Mr. Claret.
