Strikes will be held at three major container terminals at the port of Rotterdam, after the FNV Havens union voted to hold a series of walkouts in protest to possible redundancies.
The Europe Container Terminals (ECT), APM Terminals (AMPT) and Rotterdam World Gateway (RWG) facilities will see a series of 24-hour strikes for three days in December and in January, Reuters reports. The first strike is expected between December 9 and 11.
Workers at these terminals, led by FNV Havens, are demanding guarantees of no layoffs for the coming nine years, which terminal management has rejected.
Two new highly automated container terminals have recently opened on the Tweede Maasvlakte, one of them being APMT’s flagship Maasvlakte II terminal. Terminal automation is expected to cause the loss of 700 out of 4,000 jobs in container throughput at the port in 2017.
“The employers have said that they think that demand is not realistic, something of a different era,” said Sjaak Poppe, a spokesman for the Port of Rotterdam, told Reuters. The port authority has been brokering the talks, which have now stalled.
