News: General strike in France on 5 December 2019

Ahead of potentially significant disruption across France in the coming days, the club's correspondents in Marseilles-Fos have advised the following:

As the club and their members may be aware French Worker Unions have called for a general strike on December the 5th 2019 to protest against the government’s general politics and more particularly a recent draft reform in respect of workers’ pensions.

The mobilisation is expected to be massive and to affect all sectors of activity in particular but not limited to education, public health and transports (road, rail and air) likely to be widely disrupted.
 
In terms of the maritime sector, as far as the port of Marseille-Fos is concerned, port operations are expected to be frozen insofar as the dockers have already declared that they will be on strike between December the 4th 9:00pm and December the 5th 9:00pm. Further, any ship’s movement between December the 5th 6:00am and December the 6th 6:00am may be affected due the towage company joining the strike movement.

Although Unions already suggest that the strike movement could be extended, as this note is being written we do not have indication that the port activities’ disruption will last longer than as detailed above.

Members whose vessel(s) are expected to be affected by this strike movement are invited to liaise with their appointed ship agent to obtain further practical details.
 
Vessel operators should contact their local agent or our correspondents for the most up to date information of the ports.
 
We thank our correspondent McLeans for the update.