Dockers, port and construction workers blocked the port of Brest and the Saint-Nazaire bridge on Wednesday (AFP / FRED TANNEAU)
Dockers, port and construction workers blocked the port of Brest and the Saint-Nazaire bridge on Wednesday as part of a day of action launched at the call of the CGT to oppose the pension reform .
As part of a new day of “dead port” actions, the port of Brest was blocked from Wednesday 06:00, according to the CGT. There are “no entries, no exits of the trucks”, explained Sébastien Léon, CGT union representative of the port workers of Brest.
On this port, already blocked on March 8 and 16, around fifty strikers, port workers and dockers, were on site, noted an AFP journalist.
Five containers, installed by means of carriers, blocked the access route to the port of Brest and the strikers burned tires and wooden pallets.
According to Mr. Léon, no ship was unloaded and the strikers were still on site in the middle of the afternoon.
“I no longer trust this government,” said the trade unionist.
After the remarks on Tuesday by the President of the Republic considering that “the crowd” had “no legitimacy in the face of the people who express themselves, sovereign, through their elected officials”, the union representative “does not really know where we are going” .
“It still makes a hell of a mess, you can see the fire going on in the streets, I don’t know how far he’s going to send us with speeches like that”, asked Mr. Léon.
In Saint-Nazaire, a hundred demonstrators – dockers, handlers but also construction workers or from neighboring companies – also blocked the Saint-Nazaire bridge at dawn, according to an AFP correspondent, preventing all traffic of vehicle.
The atmosphere was particularly tense on the spot and street furniture was set on fire, according to an AFP photographer, who saw a half-collapsed road gantry across the tracks after being engulfed in flames.
Dockers, port and construction workers blocked the port of Brest and the Saint-Nazaire bridge (AFP / LOIC VENANCE)
The demonstrators released the scene around 2:30 p.m. but traffic on the bridge, which spans the Loire estuary between Saint-Nazaire and Saint-Brévin-les-Pins, was not to be restored for several hours.
On the port of Lorient, the two entrances leading to the oil depot were also blocked in the morning by a hundred demonstrators. These were pushed back by the police to allow the intervention of firefighters to put out fires from wooden reels, noted an AFP photographer.
Access was cleared by midday.
© 2023 AFP
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