Dockworkers, families and unions have mourned colleagues, friends and relatives following the deaths of workers in the ports of Antwerp, Bilbao, Bremerhaven, Helsinki, Oxel\u00f6sund, Sines and Valencia.<\/p>\n
Union bosses are damning of the industry, citing increased pressure on dockworkers as a key factor in the number of accidents.<\/p>\n
Terje Samuelsen, ETF Dockers’ Section chair said: \u201cWe are experiencing growing pressure on dockworkers, who are demanded to be more and more productive.<\/p>\n
\u201cTime pressures plays a significant role in safety because there is a tendency to overlook procedures that would allow preventing a certain number of accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe there is a safety emergency that must be tackled,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Rapid changes in the industry are also to blame according to Torben Seebold, vice-chair of the ETF Dockers\u2019 Section.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a recent stakeholder conference on 3 December, he said: \u201cIn a context where vessels\u2019 size is growing, cargo volume is not increasing and ships are not full, it is legitimate and urgent for the industry to dialogue and act.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPort employers are pushed to cut their costs and in the end workers pay the highest contribution, in terms of job security and working conditions, as pressure on them is increasing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDecisions on the sector can\u2019t be left to bankers and private equity funds,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The number of deaths and accidents at European ports has caused 2015 to be dubbed a \u2018dark year\u2019 for safety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":9613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-9612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9614,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9612\/revisions\/9614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9612"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=9612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}