Port closure prompts calls for strike ban

By George Psyllides
PORT WORKERS opposing denationalisation staged a 24-hour strike on Thursday, closing the island’s ports and prompting businesses to call for a law regulating strikes at essential services.
Businesses fear that an escalation of strike action would deal more blows to the island’s economy as it tries to recover.
Thursday’s action involved around two-thirds of personnel, 200 people – including those in the port authority – as two unions, SEK and PASYDY, decided not to join the action.
Workers assembled outside parliament during discussion of two privatisation related bills by the House transport committee.
Members of PEO, DEOK, and SYALK demanded a freeze to denationalisation procedures, claiming it would further burden an economy already in crisis.
Nor would it help in developing the ports.
“They are taking us back to the middle ages. All rights won through so many struggles are lost,” the workers said.
MPs told unions that the dialogue will continue and appealed to them to suspend their measures because they were not in the national interest.
But workers rejected the appeal, with some even calling for an indefinite strike.
After this, the unions decided to continue their industrial action, which includes 24-hour strikes by the various branches.
The ministry wants to invite tenders by the end of May and have the procedure wrapped up early next year.
House transport committee chairman Antonis Antoniou said a committee has been set to find ways, through dialogue, to compensate licensed porters after the commercial section of the port was privatised.
Alecos Michaelides, transport ministry permanent secretary and ports authority chairman, rejected the workers’ claims.
“This strike is completely unjustified,” he said, adding that the workers’ problems were being addressed.
Michaelides said the Limassol port was the economy’s only lung.
“The effects of closing it are huge. Where is the love for the country? Where?” he asked.
Three vessels were affected on Thursday in Limassol and a navy ship in Larnaca.
The head of the trade and industry federation OEV did not pull his punches.
“At the moment we are completely unprotected and everyone can either shut down ports or flip a switch without any consequence,” Michalis Pilikos said, predicting a “tsunami” of strikes over privatisations.
“A section of workers is prepared to shut down the only lung we have as a state, the port, to secure what? To preserve the super privileges of 200 or 300 workers.”
Pilikos urged the authorities to prepare legislation regulating strikes in essential services.
He stressed that OEV was not against the workers’ right to strike; “we are against impunity.”

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.