More than 1,900 workers at Britain’s largest container port Felixstowe have been on strike for eight days since Sunday (August 21), Reuters reported. The latest round of strike action.
Located on the east coast of England, the Port of Felixstowe is the UK’s largest and busiest container terminal, handling more than 40% of the country’s container trade. Port unions and shipping companies have warned that the strike action could severely impact UK trade and supply chains.
Bobby Morton, an officer in charge of docks at United UK, said: “The strike action will cause massive disruption and will have a severe impact on the entire UK supply chain, but this dispute is all about (ports) companies. Self-inflicted. It has many opportunities to provide fair wages to our (union) members, but it chooses not to.”
On Friday (August 19), the operator of the port of Felixstowe, Hutchison Ports, said their proposal for a 7 per cent pay rise and a one-off £500 payment was fair. Hutchison also said the deal had been accepted by the port union, which represents about 500 employees working in supervision, engineering and paperwork.
The United union, which represents the majority of dock workers, believes the pay rise is well below current inflation rates.
The latest data released on August 17 showed that consumer prices in the UK rose by 10.1% in July, the highest since February 1982. Some economists are predicting inflation in the UK will hit 15% in the first three months of next year as energy and food prices soar.
The tightening of household incomes has led to strikes by workers in a growing number of industries in the UK, protesting that pay rises are not keeping pace with inflation and demanding higher wages.
The strike action at the Port of Felixstowe will continue until August 29. The port has said it will establish a contingency plan to minimize the damage caused by the strike.
(Compile: Zhou Zhou)
Return to Sohu, see more
Editor:
Disclaimer: The opinions of this article only represent the author himself, Sohu is an information publishing platform, and Sohu only provides information storage space services.