COPENHAGEN, June 20 (Reuters) – Port operator APM Terminals, part of A.P. Moller-Maersk, said it will cut 160 staff at its Gothenburg terminal in Sweden, the largest in Scandinavia, as labour disruptions had caused container volumes to drop by 25 percent over the past year.
“We have lost about 70,000 containers in revenue over the past year,” Henrik Kristensen, head of APM Terminals in Gothenburg, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Around half of all Swedish container traffic moves through the terminal in which APM Terminals invested 800 million Danish crowns ($120 million) in 2012-16, and is currently investing a further 250 million crowns.
“This has been a very difficult but necessary decision caused by the Swedish Dockworkers’ Union’s consecutive blockades and nine strikes for over a year resulting in several shipping lines no longer calling (at) Gothenburg,” Kristensen said in a separate statement, referring to the planned job cuts.
The strike is about the Swedish Dockworkers’ Union’s (SDU) right to represent its members in negotiations with the company, union spokesman Anders Moller said. Around 85 percent of employees at the port are members of the union.
The company, which employs 450 people in Gothenburg, wants to secure a no-strike agreement with workers, Moller said.
“If we are going to give away our right to strike, we have to have a reasonable ability to represent our members, to take part in negotiations, to pick safety foremen,” he said.
Since May 19, the company has locked out SDU members from working the night shift and refuses to hold direct talks with the union, he said, adding that the big drop in production had been since the lockout.
Negotiations on the layoffs will be completed in a few months, according to APM Terminals. ($1 = 6.6721 Danish crowns) (Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Additional reporting by Simon Johnson in Stockholm; Editing by Susan Fenton)
COPENHAGEN, April 15 (Reuters) – Shipping company Maersk has not made any deployment changes after a Portuguese-flagged container ship was seized by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, the Danish company said on Monday. “We find recent...
WASHINGTON, April 15 (Reuters) – The FBI has opened a federal criminal investigation into the deadly collapse of a Baltimore bridge last month when a ship crashed into one of its supports,...
By Daryna Krasnolutska (Bloomberg) Russia and Ukraine may have struggled to shift things significantly on the battlefield for more than 16 months, but a new phase of the war is moving...
April 14, 2024
Total Views: 2066
Why Join the gCaptain Club?
Access exclusive insights, engage in vibrant discussions, and gain perspectives from our CEO.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.