On Thursday, 5 June, workers at the port of Marseille unionised with CGT and backed by a solidarity presidium, successfully refused three containers full of military equipment which were scheduled to be loaded onto the Contship Era, chartered by Israeli shipping company ZIM.
The shipment included 14 tonnes of machine gun components and spare parts bound for Haifa.
The ship was due to make a technical stopover for refuelling at Genoa on Friday 6 June. A protest presidium was called by the Genoa Port Workers’ Collective (CALP) and the USB trade union.
Contingency plans were in place: in the event that the French comrades had failed to sabotage the cargo, the Italian dockworkers were prepared to prevent the shipment proceeding further.
However, with the successful action of the Marseille dockworkers, the ship’s departure was delayed.
The solidarity event on the Italian side was therefore postponed Saturday 6 June.
Once the ship eventually reached the Genoa port, chants demanding ‘stop genocide!’ were heard as a demonstration of more than 300 people marched into the port crossing.
As requested by their French colleagues, the dockers in Genoa inspected each container to ensure that no military cargo was on the ship.
The next stop was scheduled for Sunday 8 in Salerno, Italy, where demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine were expected to continue. In fact, the Contship Era decided to change course, heading for Sicily.
This event does not come out of the blue. In 2023, the Genoa Port Workers’ Collective had already launched an international mobilisation against the shipment of arms to war zones under the slogan ‘lower the guns, raise the wages’. Earlier this year, after the Greek national strike that opposed both the conservative government and European austerity policies, the International Coordination of Dockworkers was founded. On that occasion, workers in 54 cities of other countries joined in solidarity with the Greek strike, paving the way for wider collaboration. Today, workers’ organisations from Greece, Turkey, Morocco, France and Italy are currently members. The lever that drove this alliance is the desire to jam the war machine by targeting the ports that keep it moving.
Earlier still, in 2019 and 2020, the harbours of Genoa had refused to load war shipments on the Saudi ‘Bahri’ fleet bound for Yemen, inspiring similar blocks in other ports across Europe like: Marseille, Le Havre (Normandy) and Bilbao (Basques).
The Genoa Port Workers’ Collective are also trying to put pressure on the institutions by appealing to law 185/90, which prohibits the transit of armaments to theatres of war. Additionally, dockworkers have raised issues regarding non-compliance with safety regulations concerning the docking and mooring of ships loaded with weapons and explosives.
The first major stance against the genocide in Gaza was organised by Moroccan dockers in Casablanca, preventing the loading of F-35 components on a ship headed to Haifa.
These partial successes give positive energy and hope in difficult times of war and repression. The logistics sector once again proves to be a focal point for capital; it has itself been developed to supply the armies more effectively. For this movement to be truly effective, all logistics actors must continue to use their structural leverage to enforce a generalised embargo.
