By Reuters 2015-06-30 09:50:16
Employees of the MyFerryLink ferry service, recently sold by Eurotunnel, maintained their blockade of the northern French port of Calais for a second day on Tuesday after a court rejected their bid to extend a charter contract with Eurotunnel.
Workers at the ferry service are trying to prevent job cuts after their company was sold to a Danish firm earlier this month. It is the second time they have shut the tunnel in less than a week, causing chaos for trucking firms and holidaymakers.
MyFerryLink was previously owned by Eurotunnel, the company that operates the undersea cross-Channel rail link.
Protesting ferry workers forced the closure of the Channel Tunnel linking France and England on Tuesday, blocking its entrance and setting fire to tires thrown onto railway tracks.
“The blockade is in place,” trade unionist Eric Vercoutre of the MyFerryLink works council, told reporters.
“We want to make the French, British and Belgian governments understand that if a solution isn’t found to save our 600 jobs, there will be a lot of disruption this summer.
“When the mobilization ramps up, we’ll block everything, which could disrupt Eurotunnel,” he warned.
Eurotunnel said on its website: “Our passenger service is temporarily suspended due to a breach of our terminal boundaries.”
Strike action by around 400 workers last week caused major traffic jams of trucks.
Calais is a magnet for migrants, many from troubled parts of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, who use it as a jumping-off point to try to get across to Britain. The chaos of the past week has seen an increase in attempts to stow away on trucks heading across the Channel.
A Reuters reporter in Calais saw dozens of lorries jammed up on the motorway leading to the port on Tuesday. Strikers barred access to the port, which looked largely empty inside. Just three passenger cars were waiting at customs.
“This is not a very nice thing to happen to us,” Stanley Shakespeare, a retired Londoner, said as he and his wife tried to head home after a holiday in Spain.
“We love France and we love the French people, who are very nice, but as we got here today I may change my mind.”
Eurotunnel in June agreed to sell its Calais-to-Dover ferry business to Denmark’s DFDS to end a lengthy battle with British competition authorities.
SCOP Sea France, the co-operative of workers that runs the ferries, asked a commercial court to extend its contract with Eurotunnel and prevent it from being dissolved after the sale. The court on Monday rejected that request.
DFDS, which is set to take over operation of the ferries on July 2, has pledged to keep 202 out of 577 workers, a level the union sees as unacceptable.
The ferry workers had initially tried to buy the business of operating the two ferries from Eurotunnel themselves but failed.
This post was sourced from Maritime Executive: View original article here.
