Norway: Dockers to blockade Israeli ships

Reports are beginning to come in of one of the first examples of a trade union responding to the call by some Palestinian unions (and the World Federation of Trade Unions) to refuse to load and unload Israeli ships. Norwegian dockers seem to be among the very first to heed this call. (There are also reports that Swedish dock workers are blockading Israeli ships starting this week.)

For those of you who don’t know what the World Federation of Trade Unions is, suffice it to say that its president comes from the state-controlled Syrian “unions”, its deputy general secretaries are officials of state-controlled unions in the Sudan, Syria and Cuba, and its vice presidents include Kim Byong Phal, representing the North Korean regime, er, unions.

Norway’s dock workers are not affiliated to this lot, and their global union federation — the International Transport Workers Federation — has not endorsed the call for a boycott.