The damage done in Gioia Tauro was reportedly significantly larger than in Genoa – with its main customer Maersk Line, and others, diverting 30% to 50% of their Gioia Tauro cargo to other ports.

At the other end of the Mediterranean in the eastern sector, the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki also had their fair share of strikes prompting in the case of Piraeus its major customer, MSC, to leave first for the Evergreen transhipment base of Taranto and then on to Gioia Tauro. The strikes in Greece, however, were not about rates of pay or procedural matters but about the “P”word – privatisation.

Privatisation has at last come to the eastern Mediterranean on a large scale and the Greek Government has decided basically to jump on the bandwagon rather than be left behind by other ports in the region such as those that have been and are about to be privatised in Greece and Egypt. The labour in Piraeus has always been particularly militant and it comes as no surprise that they quickly downed tools when privatisation reared its head and eventually ended up wringing from government the concession that in proceeding down the privatisation trail it will give equal attention to considering the idea of continuing with public sector-backed operations.

The Greek government so far has not been particularly astute in the way it has gone about introducing the idea of port privatisation. First we had the news blazed all over the place that the shipping line Cosco had been awarded the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki under the privatisation programme. This has subsequently turned out to be totally inaccurate and it is now known that the intention is to launch a bid-based privatisation programme in the spring with the aim of announcing the successful bidder(s) before the end of the year. Any timetable that goes beyond this is likely to run into problems as a result of scheduled general elections in Greece.

It has also become clear,however, that Greece’s initial thinking on the bid criteria was governed by one single factor – price. There was, for instance, no mention of the usual technical qualifications required based on operator experience and so on. This latter factor may, though, eventually be changed as learned heads have put their minds to making the government see sense in this respect. Cause and effect

It is interesting to speculate on the cause of the problems referenced above. The strikes in Gioia Tauro and Genoa are probably not that unusual in that these are the sorts of strikes that happen from time to time between employers and workforces which are basically somewhat distant from each other.

It is equally true to say, however, that while Italy has enacted significant labour reforms it has never really had the political will to introduce them in practice – hence there may be something of a hangover from the “bad old days”.

In Greece the situation is clear – the government is privatising but has not had the courage to tackle labour reform as part of this process. In effect, it will leave this problem for the incoming investor,a solution which has proved itself elsewhere not to be a solution at all. This unwillingness to work through reforms properly and to get to grips with labour reforms at all in any meaningful way is very disappointing. It goes against what experience elsewhere tells us is the best thing to do (confront labour issues as part of privatisation) and inevitably spells problems further down the track.