German Waterways Strike: 150 Barges Held Up

More than 150 barges are anchored at or near locks in western Germany's river and canal systems hit by a lock workers strike, report Platts, citing the German waterway shipping lobby BDB and German shipping firm sources.

The German waterway system has 435 locks, the lion's share in western Germany. The small number in eastern Germany have been excluded from the strikes because of massive recovery work from last month's catastrophic flooding there.



The west German strikes, called by the country's service workers union Ver.di, have meanwhile spread to locks in seven of the region's 10 states and city states.


The strikes are a move to seek better worker conditions in a German government reform plan for the country's federally subsided, but mostly aging and increasingly costly river canal systems, reports Platts.

Source: Platts