Dockworkers walked out at 113 ports in 22 countries on Friday, disrupting cargo handling and ferry services in protest against the use of their ports for arms shipments and the growing number of seafarers killed in wars from the Gulf to the Black Sea.
The stoppage matters because it hit some of the busiest shipping lanes in Europe and beyond on a single day, linking a labour dispute over pay and safety directly to the wars that have made merchant shipping more dangerous. It also showed how far port workers are willing to go to refuse cargo they believe is bound for war zones.
More than 25 unions backed the strike, according to Reuters, which reported the walkout from Athens on Friday. The action was originally called in Italy, France, Greece, Spain’s Basque Country, Turkey and Morocco, and then spread to ports across Europe and beyond.
On Friday it covered major shipping hubs including Piraeus, Valencia, Le Havre, Algeciras and Genoa, as well as Morocco’s Tangier Med and India’s Nhava Sheva, Reuters reported. Organisers had said ahead of the strike that it could disrupt more than 40 percent of Mediterranean cargo.
In Piraeus, the port serving Athens, cargo operations were disrupted and ferry services to the Greek islands were suspended, as about 3,000 dockworkers and seafarers joined the walkout, Reuters reported. Ferries also remained docked at Greek ports as dockworkers, engineers and seafarers’ unions joined the strike.
“We will not work for their wars, and we will not become food for their cannons,” Apostolos Kypraios, head of the Greek union of merchant marine engineers, told Reuters during a rally at the port of Piraeus. “We have felt it first hand, and our families have felt it too, living with the anxiety of whether a colleague will get back home,” he added.
Beyond the protest against arms shipments, strikers also called for pay rises, better working conditions and the right to have doctors on board vessels crossing war zones, Reuters reported. Dockworkers said they were also worried about the rising cost of essential goods and energy linked to the ongoing conflicts.
“We can’t even afford to fill the car with fuel to get to the supermarket,” George Gogos, head of the Piraeus port dockworkers’ union, said.
Greek seafarers’ union PENEN said seafarers had suffered many casualties, numbering in the hundreds, including both the dead and the severely injured. It said there had been 28 attacks on vessels in the Gulf in the first 21 days of October, a record since the start of the Iran war, and 570 confirmed attacks in the Black Sea so far this year, leaving 40 seafarers dead and hundreds wounded, according to Reuters.
Representatives of India’s Water Transport Workers Federation of India said about 15 Indian seafarers had died as a result of the Iran war, with many more stranded at sea as waterways were blocked, Reuters reported. About a dozen ports in India were expected to be disrupted, organisers had said before the strike.
A group of dockworkers and other activists, called No Harbour for Genocide and campaigning to stop military cargo from reaching Israeli ports, said on Friday the protest would halt some 52,000 containers and snarl cargo worth 2.8 billion dollars. Reuters said it was not able to independently verify that impact, and the scale of the overall disruption remained unclear as the strike unfolded.
Unions taking part included ver.di in Germany, Ireland’s largest trade union SIPTU, 3F in Denmark and CGT Ports et Docks in France, according to the pre-strike Reuters report. In Italy, grassroots union Unione Sindacale di Base called a 24-hour general strike for the same day, with protests scheduled in more than 40 cities.
The strike followed a declaration in May 2026 in which dockworkers’ unions from more than 35 European countries published the so-called Istanbul Declaration, demanding that port facilities not be used to transport weapons destined for war zones. A series of strikes in the western Black Sea has also raised concerns about the widening scope of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
What is confirmed is that dockworkers in 22 countries stopped work on Friday, that cargo and ferry services were disrupted at Piraeus, and that unions are demanding an end to military cargo through civilian ports alongside better pay and safety. What is not yet verified is the full cost of the disruption, including the activists’ claim of 52,000 halted containers, and whether organisers plan further coordinated stoppages.
