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BRUNO
Carpentier sits in an office with bars on the windows
and two German Shepherds on the roof, counting his
losses as wildcat strikes at the Port of Marseille,
France’s largest, divert ships to Spain and Italy.
“The
effects of strikes are costly,” said the 59-year-old
head of Manutention Generale Mediterraneenne, the port’s
biggest cargo handler, who has lived through times when
labor unrest led to violence. “They hurt the image of
the port.”
Legislation that calls for the state to sell
dock-equipment management to private companies sparked
the latest walkouts at ports.
The
plan, to be considered by government ministers tomorrow,
shrinks public services and may threaten jobs, union
officials say.
The
unions have disrupted shipping with stoppages and are
calling for a strike at France’s seven biggest ports.
French
President Nicolas Sarkozy says he wants to make ports
more competitive after government statistics showed
their share of container traffic dropped by 50 percent
between 1989 and 2006.
Unions
say there will be “paralysis” and “serious economic
consequences” if the government doesn’t back down.
“We’re
like the Gallic village,” said Patrick Deshayes, a
Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) labor-union
representative at France’s largest container port, Le
Havre.
Deshayes
was alluding to the hamlet in the Asterix comic books
that refused to accept occupation by Julius Caesar.
Disruptions
THE CGT
shut down ports for 170 days to protest against a 1992
law that moved dock workers to nonstate companies. A
17-day Marseille strike last year cost Carpentier’s
company $2.4 million.
At the
heart of the current battle is what freight forwarders,
refiners and ship owners say is an archaic system under
which cargo handlers are private, while port equipment
is managed by state-owned entities.
Cargo
companies that employ dock workers to load and unload
vessels have to use port employees to operate cranes.
“It’s
like someone telling you that you can rent a car if you
agree to operate the accelerator and someone else
handles the brake,” said Edouard Berlet, vice president
of institutional relations at CMA CGM SA, the world’s
third-biggest container-shipping company. “Companies
won’t invest in cranes if they can’t directly employ the
operators.”
‘Unique
to
France’
AT the
Mediterranean
port of
Marseille,
cargo is unloaded between three and seven times more
slowly than at other terminals.
Container vessels docking in
Shanghai,
the world’s largest port, are unloaded at the rate of
150 movements an hour compared with between 20 and 50 in
Marseille, according to Marseille’s Chamber of Commerce.
Putting
cranes and operators into private ownership is “key” to
raising investment and productivity, said Jean Chapon, a
former French civil servant for ports and maritime
affairs in
Paris. The current system “is unique to
France,”
he said. “It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.”
Cargo
handling at Marseille is also at least a third more
expensive than in Spain and Italy.
Plan B
SHIPPING
companies are “reactive,” and when a port is expensive
or dysfunctional, they move elsewhere and so does the
cargo, said Chapon.
“Our
members always have a plan B and C,” Philippe Bonnevie,
head of France’s Freight Transport Users Association,
said in a telephone interview from Paris.
“Unfortunately, they are used to problems at French
ports.’’
Le
Havre, France’s largest container port, ranks 48th in
the world, behind Rotterdam in seventh position and
Antwerp in 14th, according to the American Association
of Port Authorities’ 2006 ranking. France’s seven
biggest ports handled 304 million tons of cargo last
year, compared with about 400 million tons by Rotterdam
alone.
The CGT
says the most contentious part of the government’s plan
is a change of status for 2,000 workers who operate and
maintain cranes and equipment. The government wants the
workers and equipment transferred to companies such as
Carpentier’s MGM.
“We want
to remain state workers,” said Deshayes. “Our jobs
should be under state control. The state must keep the
right to oversee what comes in and out of harbors,” he
said, citing the need to keep out hazardous materials
and weapons.
At the
CGT office in Marseille, visitors are greeted by a red
hallway and a door adorned with an image of Che Guevera.
The government effort is politically motivated and aimed
at shrinking the public sector, according to the union.
“Just
because you make a crane professional work for a private
company doesn’t mean he will work better,” said Antoine
Montoya, head of the CGT’s dock workers’ union in
Marseille. “You aren’t going to change his brain.”
(Bloomberg) |
