1,900 workers at the port of Felixstowe on England’s east coast want to lay down their jobs after the union failed to reach an agreement with the employer on wage increases.
Dockers at the Felixstowe container port in the UK have announced a multi-day strike.
(dpa)
A multi-day strike by dockers at Britain’s largest container port threatens to further strain British supply chains. “Almost half of British container traffic goes through the port of Felixstowe and 65 percent of incoming containers,” said British trade expert Rebecca Harding of the German Press Agency. An eight-day strike of the kind planned from Sunday would put imports and exports worth around £800m at risk, with the clothing and electronics sectors being particularly hard hit.
1,900 employees at the port of Felixstowe on the east coast of England want to lay down their jobs. The Unite union called the strike after a failed agreement with the employer, the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company. The offer of a seven percent wage increase is not high enough for the union in view of skyrocketing consumer prices. Inflation climbed to over 10 percent in the UK in July. Unite announced that the incipient strike would “send massive shockwaves through UK supply chains”. In Liverpool, too, the dockers want to lay down their work shortly.
The British Ports Association, on the other hand, has not yet expected any long-term effects on British supply chains.