Germany’s ver.di union has opened a formal strike ballot among roughly 11,000 dockworkers at six ports, running through the evening of October 1. If at least 75% of members who vote reject the employers’ offer and back indefinite action, ver.di’s bargaining commission, not the port operators, decides whether talks have failed and strikes begin.
The ballot follows a ver.di member survey, first reported by The Loadstar, in which 64.7% of more than 5,500 workers rejected the employers’ latest offer of a 3.4% raise backdated to August 1, plus €200 in extra holiday pay and a €416 bonus for container terminal workers. ver.di is asking for 8.2% more per hour, with a minimum of €2.50.
Workers have already held two rounds of warning strikes this year, including a 48-hour strike across all six ports in early September, before escalating to this formal ballot.
The dispute covers Hamburg and Bremerhaven, Germany’s two largest container gateways, along with Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Emden and Brake.
German terminals aren’t the only ones bracing. Dutch dockworkers at Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Zeeland were also preparing to walk out, WorldCargo News reports, raising the prospect of overlapping disruption at Northern Europe’s two biggest port systems heading into peak season.
No indefinite strike has been called yet. But one at Hamburg and Bremerhaven would land squarely on Europe-bound freight moving through October.
