Around 1000 employees followed Verdi’s call for a warning strike in the port of Bremerhaven in the evening. As a result, no container ships could be loaded or unloaded.
With a warning strike lasting several hours, the port workers paralyzed the handling of container ships and car transporters in Bremen and Lower Saxony on Thursday.
In the second largest German port of Bremerhaven, around 1,000 employees took part, according to union information. According to this information, no more container ships were loaded or unloaded at the Stromkaje in the late shift. “The bridges are all standing still,” said Tobias Uelschen from the Verdi union. Car loading was also affected.
No clearance for customers
“It’s not much,” said a spokesman for the terminal operator Eurogate. The company works in Bremerhaven, Wilhelmshaven and Hamburg. «We have prepared for it. We have informed our customers that we cannot offer any handling in the late shift.» Work is expected to resume around 6:30 p.m. as announced.
The first warning strike in decades is intended to put pressure on the third round of negotiations with the Central Association of German Seaport Companies (ZDS). It will take place in Hamburg on Friday. For the approximately 12,000 employees in the 58 collectively agreed seaport companies in Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Bremen, Verdi demands an unspecified “actual inflation compensation” and an increase in hourly wages of 1.20 euros.
In Bremen, around 75 employees at the Neustädter Hafen did not start their late shift. At the Jade-Weser-Port in Wilhelmshaven, 75 of the 80 workers assigned to the late shift took part in the walkout. In Emden, Verdi counted 200 colleagues on the warning strike.
