Dockworkers strike at 113 ports across five continents under slogan 'We don't work for war'
More than 25 dockworkers' unions stopped work or demonstrated at 113 ports on Friday, protesting against the use of commercial ports for arms shipments and military operations.
Dockworkers stopped work or took to the streets at 113 ports across five continents on Friday, in a coordinated international day of action against what unions describe as the militarisation of commercial shipping.
More than 25 unions took part, according to organisers and news agency reports, under the slogan "We don't work for war". The action covered major hubs in Europe and beyond, including Piraeus in Greece, Genoa, Livorno and Gioia Tauro in Italy, Marseille and Le Havre in France, Valencia and Algeciras in Spain, Tangier Med in Morocco and Nhava Sheva in India.
Reports differ slightly on the country count, with Anadolu Agency putting it at 21 countries and Reuters at 22, but both agree on the scale: 113 ports, five continents, and a movement that began in Italy, France, Greece, Spain's Basque Country, Turkey and Morocco and has since spread far wider.
In Piraeus, Greece's largest port, demonstrators unfurled a large banner reading "Workers do not work for war". Apostolos Kypraios, head of the Greek union of merchant marine engineers, told Reuters at the rally: "We will not work for their wars, and we will not become food for their cannons."
In Thessaloniki, a three-hour work stoppage halted more than 200 containers and trucks, according to Anadolu Agency. In Italy, port workers staged a nationwide 24-hour strike, with Genoa, the country's busiest port, at the forefront. In France, the CGT dockworkers' union called a 24-hour walkout at about two dozen ports.
The strikers' demands go beyond a single shipment. Reuters reported that they also called for pay rises, better working conditions and the right to have doctors on board vessels crossing war zones, alongside their central demand that ports serve civilian needs rather than military operations.
Behind the protest lies a longer campaign against weapons cargo. The No Harbour for Genocide campaign said it had tracked 315 shipments of components for Elbit Systems, Israel's largest arms manufacturer, passing through 56 commercial ports in 29 countries between August 2025 and September 2026. The campaign said Friday's protest would halt some 52,000 containers and snarl cargo worth $2.8 billion, though Reuters said it was not able to independently verify that impact figure.
The unions also pointed to the human cost of war at sea. Organisers' figures cited by Reuters said there had been 28 attacks on vessels in the Gulf in the first 21 days of October, described as a record since the start of the Iran war, and 570 attacks confirmed in the Black Sea so far this year, leaving 40 seafarers dead and hundreds wounded.
The action has roots in the Istanbul Declaration published in May 2026, when dockworkers' unions from more than 35 European countries demanded that port facilities not be used to transport weapons destined for war zones. A first international day of action on 6 February involved 20 ports in seven countries; Friday's action was the second, and far larger.
What happens next is still open. Friday's stoppages were planned as a one-day action, so ports are expected to resume normal operations, but unions have signalled further coordinated days if their demands are ignored. Shipping companies and port operators may face fresh delays if the campaign targets individual vessels again, as Livorno dockworkers did on 22 October when they refused, shift after shift, to load a ship carrying supplies for a naval air station in Sicily. For now, the protest has shown that a dispute over what passes through a port can, in a single day, reach from the Mediterranean to the North Sea and beyond.
