Faced with soaring prices, oil prices, and high inflation, employees of the British railway system decided to go on strike on June 21, 23, and 25 to strive for improved working conditions. This is also the largest railway strike in 30 years.
According to reports, rail services are expected to be severely affected that week. Railway companies have also introduced emergency service timetables, but they can only maintain about 1/5 of the frequency. Due to the signal workers’ strike, train operations in some rural areas will be seriously affected.
British media said the strike was caused by a dispute between labor and management over salary increases. The union demanded a 7% wage increase, but the railway company said it could only raise wages by 3%. The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union has threatened that the rail strike could last for six months.
Union bosses said many people had not received “proper” wage increases since 2010. It is also said that many areas in the UK lack the corresponding power, organizational capacity and sufficient funds to deal with employers’ continuous lowering of wages, so the British working class is getting poorer year by year, while the rich are getting richer.
Regarding the impact of the strike on transportation, Maersk recently announced that it is maintaining close communication with British railway freight operators and hopes to minimize the impact of the strike on Maersk’s inland operations in the UK.
According to the announcement, Maersk’s rail operations in the UK’s interior will operate normally during the period when there is no strike action. While many of the company’s services will be canceled on strike days, some will continue to operate to keep goods moving.
Maersk also reminded customers that there may be a risk of unexpected disruption to British rail transport due to the strike.
Strikes broke out in many European countries
Under inflationary pressure, not only British railway workers, but also more unions have taken strikes:
The “Road Transport Defense Platform” of Spain’s small and medium-sized transport truck drivers and self-employed transport drivers will hold a general meeting on June 26 to decide whether to continue the strike.
The previous nationwide strike by small and medium-sized truck drivers to protest rising oil prices lasted for a month, leading to a supply shortage crisis in Spain.
Port workers at Germany’s five major ports launched a four-hour “warning strike” during the night shift to support the ongoing labor negotiations between the dock unions and port operators! Recently, the first round of negotiations between the union and the port operator failed, making the situation even more serious.
Another strike at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, one of Europe’s largest ports, comes at a time when Belgium’s port facilities are experiencing untimely and severe congestion.
Many unions in Belgium are planning another nationwide strike to demand higher wages, greater dialogue and public sector investment.
The Rotterdam port yard is full, and empty containers are backlogged and difficult to return to China
While strikes are happening in Europe, the backlog of undelivered goods at the Port of Rotterdam is also getting worse. That’s forcing shipping companies to prioritize shipping fully loaded containers, leaving empty containers vital to Asian exporters being stuck in the export hub.
The Port of Rotterdam said yard density at the Port of Rotterdam has been very high over the past few months due to no longer punctual ocean vessel schedules and extended dwell times for import containers. The situation has resulted in terminals having to move empty containers to warehouses in some cases to reduce congestion at the yards.
Although the current epidemic situation in China has improved significantly, due to ship shortages and delays at European ports, European exports have to compete with empty containers destined for China, which may cause further disruption to Asia-Europe routes.
Many logistics companies say that Chinese factories will need a large number of empty containers to make up for delayed or unfulfilled orders in the past few months, and all this is hindered by a shortage of ships and containers.
According to data from FourKites, the volume of truck container freight entering Shanghai from China’s surrounding provinces has now returned to 71% of the level before the current outbreak.
Although rail transport has often been able to share the congestion pressure faced by ports in the past, the recent outbreak of the epidemic and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine have also caused many companies to avoid land transport. At the same time, the recent strikes in Europe have exacerbated the difficulties faced by logistics.
Maersk has also recently warned that its service network is “under severe pressure”, which the company blames on “operational disruptions at European ports”. Maersk said, “Our ships have experienced significant delays in Northern Europe, which has affected shipping schedules back to the Asia-Pacific.”
Maersk said bottlenecks in its Asia-North Europe network were causing service delays. In order to coordinate network deployment across the market and improve shipping schedule visibility – Maersk has made the following shipping schedule adjustments.
The situation means longer waiting times for ships at all major Nordic ports, Kuehne + Nagel International said. Year 4 and 5About 60% of ships traveling from Europe to Asia experienced delays in March, with 13 ships waiting for berths outside the port of Rotterdam as of June 17.
On one side are overcrowded terminals, and on the other are dock/railway/transportation workers preparing to go on strike to protest wages and benefits. Under a double blow, shipping schedules and delivery times may be further delayed.
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