The Verdi union has called on employees from port companies, members of the DGB unions and citizens of Hamburg to demonstrate against the sale of shares in the port logistics company HHLA to the world’s largest container shipping company MSC.
The aim of next Wednesday’s demonstration is to emphatically underline the negative attitude towards privatization, the union announced on Saturday. The further privatization of the Port of Hamburg not only poses risks for employees, but also endangers the interests of the city’s society.
“The interests of a private investor only very rarely coincide with those of the city or its citizens,” said Sandra Goldschmidt, regional district manager for Verdi Hamburg. A strategic development of the port that makes sense for urban society in the long term, including from an environmental and climate policy perspective, will be made significantly more difficult by further privatization of HHLA. “Instead of correcting the CDU’s wrong decision to partially privatize HHLA in 2007, the current red-green Senate is planning to further reduce its shares in HHLA. We therefore call on the members of the Hamburg parliament to stop this madness and take action against it to vote for the planned sale of around 20 percent of HHLA shares.”
Since the plans were announced in autumn 2023, Verdi has been warning of possible negative effects on employment, working conditions and tariffs as a result of privatization. The promise of exclusions from dismissal for operational reasons for five years appears to be insufficient protection. At the same time, the future of more than 3,000 employees in Eurogate, the entire port operation, the lashing operations, mooring lines, tugboats and other trades remains unclear.
Hamburg’s red-green Senate officially approved the agreed entry of Hapag-Lloyd’s rival into the Hamburg port logistics company HHLA on Tuesday. The city and the Italian Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), based in Geneva, want to run Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) as a joint venture in the future, in which the city holds a majority of 50.1 percent. The city currently owns around 70 percent of the listed HHLA, which is expected to remain in its current form until the end of 2026. The Hamburg citizenship still has to approve the controversial deal.
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HAMBURG (dpa-AFX)
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