Strike Paralyzes Shipping at Antwerp and Other Belgian Ports
A strike that started on Monday, March 9, quickly spiraled across Belgium and has once again left most shipping at a standstill. What was originally expected to be a short-duration event has been extended and will roll into a national strike day on Thursday, raising the prospects for extensive delays and the potential for ferry and other services in Belgium to also be curtailed.
The strike is a renewal of the dispute between the unions representing the maritime trades, including the shipping control stations and the pilots, with proposed austerity measures implemented by the Belgian coalition government. The government is cutting pension plans, with the union asserting the latest plan is cutting pensions by up to 25 percent. Negotiations have been going on for more than a year, with a strike in April 2025, followed by a slowdown by the pilots in October and another national strike in November.
The unions are demanding a single unified pension plan for all their members, regardless of their role in the industry. Four unions united last fall with demands about pensions, as well as work rules for new hires and financial indexing. In October, they said over 140,000 people demonstrated in Brussels, and they coordinated a four-day strike in November.
The latest strike began Monday with the railways and was expected to last three days, followed by the national strike day on March 12. For shipping, Monday evening the controllers at the Zeebrugge traffic control center planned an overnight action from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. The pilots who guide ships in and out of Belgium were also expected to go on a rest period from midnight to 10 a.m. on Tuesday.
Instead of returning to work on Tuesday morning as planned, the Zeebrugge control center announced the strike was being extended until 7:30 p.m. Tuesday night, and then it said it would go until 7:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. Similarly, the pilots went on strike at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, and from there the effort rapidly intensified. The traffic control center at Zandvliet announced it would close overnight from Tuesday into Wednesday, and the crews responsible for the rescue boats at Vlissingen also joined the strike, saying the rescue boats would not sail.
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Shipping backups quickly grew from a report of 26 ships waiting in the North Sea on Tuesday morning to 46 by Tuesday evening. A total of 18 were struck in Antwerp, unable to depart, while five others were stuck in Zeebrugge. Antwerp was reporting that 33 inbound ships were holding offshore as of late on Tuesday, with another 18 inbound for Zeebrugge also remaining offshore, including an LNG delivery. It said that four ships have already canceled port calls.
The Port of Antwerp-Bruges authority said it was closely monitoring the situation and would provide updates when they became available. It is warning shipping to expect disruptions all week, and in the past it had said it would take days to clear the backlogs that had built up.
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