Dockworkers in Italy secure victory as shipping companies announce return of Israeli-bound weapons cargo to its point of origin

Italian port workers secured a significant win in their ongoing resistance to militarization and arms transfers, as shipping operators decided they would not unload military cargo destined for Israel from the vessel COSCO Shipping Pisces – returning the containers to their point of origin instead. The announcement came just days before a planned 24-hour strike on August 5 in Genoa, launched to protest the use of Italian ports for arms shipments such as this.

“We were informed today that the three containers carrying military equipment, destined for La Spezia and transported aboard the COSCO Pisces, will not be unloaded in either Genoa or La Spezia,” the union Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) stated on Thursday. “This decision marks a tangible result of union action and the pressure exerted by USB.”

This outcome adds to a growing list of union-led actions across Europe in solidarity with Palestine and against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where at least 60,000 people have been killed by the Israeli occupation. “From Greece to Liguria, as previously demonstrated with the support of French dockworkers, the network of dockworkers across Europe and the Mediterranean has shown that stopping war logistics is possible, legitimate, and necessary,” USB wrote.

Following the announcement, the August 5 strike was called off. However, Genoa dockworkers have pledged to continue mobilizing against the arms trade. They have also announced plans for an international assembly on September 26–27, which aims to lay the groundwork for a sector-wide strike. “We are not alone: our struggle unites Marseille, Piraeus, Hamburg, Tangier,” trade unionists declared earlier in July. “If the war comes through the ports, the response must come from the ports.”

USB’s logistical workers continue to expand their campaign on the principle that strikes are a legitimate tool in the fight against war, militarization, and forced worker involvement in arms trafficking. While facing institutional pushback, they remain determined in their repudiation of war. “Law 146/1990 speaks clearly: war operations are not essential services, and a strike is legitimate if it serves to defend collective security and constitutional order,” the union noted. “Stopping arms is not just a political choice, it is a right.”

Locally, from Genoa to Brescia, workers’ actions are disrupting the chains that fuel massacres and armed conflict, USB emphasized. Their mobilization against the arms trade, including strikes, is backed by a growing international solidarity bloc. “Dockworkers in Europe, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere will not become accomplices of the murderous state of Israel and its allies – the USA, NATO, and the EU,” the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) wrote in a statement of support to dockworkers in Italy. “They will not allow ports and infrastructure to become instruments of war for the slaughter of people by the imperialists.”

Photo: Dockworkers in Genoa protest forced complicity of Italian ports in Gaza genocide, June 2025. [Source: Unione Sindacale di Base]

Source: Peoples Dispatch

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