JOINT DECLARATION of the 3rd International Meeting of Dockworkers’ Unions in Istanbul
18th – 19th of May 2026
Dockworkers will not become a link in the chain of their wars!
We, the dockworkers’ unions from more than 35 ports around Europe and Mediterrean e, who met in Istanbul at the 3rd International Meeting of Dockworkers’ Unions, address a common militant call to our fellow workers in every port, in every country.
Our meeting is taking place at a time when developments are dramatically confirming what we have already declared: ports, sea routes, railways, warehouses, logistics, the entire transport chain, are being transformed more and more openly into infrastructures of war.
The governments, the USA, NATO, the EU and the monopolies want to make workers accomplices in the transport of weapons and military material destined for the slaughter of peoples.
We will not do them the favor!
We are not starting from zero. We already have experience, common decisions, valuable legacies and bonds forged in struggle.
The strike and international day of action that we organized on 6th of February in 7 countries and 20 ports was a historic milestone. Dockworkers sent a powerful message that they do not work for the wars of the imperialists.
They proved that coordination is not just a slogan. It can become action. It can reach from Piraeus to Genoa, Marseille, Tangier, Mersin, Bilbao, Pasaia, Trieste, to every port where workers raise their heads.
Today, however, developments demand that we continue even more decisively what we have begun.
The imperialist war in the Middle East is spreading. The genocide of the Palestinian people by the murderer-state of Israel continues with the support of the USA, NATO and the EU. The US-Israeli attack against Iran, the war flare-up in the Strait of Hormuz, the attacks on ships, the blockades, the militarization of maritime passages, all show that peoples and workers are being pushed deeper into the abyss of war.
Our ports themselves are on the front line of this conflict. They want our hands to load weapons, to serve their armies. They want the infrastructures built with the sweat of workers to become bases for interventions, blockades, genocides and attacks against peoples.
Governments speak of “security,” “stability,” and “freedom of navigation.” But the truth is different. Behind these words lie the rivalries over the control of energy routes, trade routes, ports, raw materials and markets.
Behind them lies the conflict between powerful capitalist states over who will dominate in the imperialist system. This has nothing to do with the interests or the security of the peoples.
Faced with this reality, workers cannot place their trust in those trade union forces that accept the goals of the “war economy,” that present involvement in wars as “development,” “jobs” or the “national interest,” that call on workers to make sacrifices for profits and wars, to line up behind the needs of governments, shipowners, monopolies and imperialist alliances.
At the same time that billions are being spent on armaments, port workers are working under intensification, exhausting schedules, flexible labor relations, subcontracting, low wages, and a lack of health and safety measures. They suffer the consequences of war, which brings inflation and rising prices in food, fuel and basic necessities.
They sacrifice our lives for their profits in times of peace, and now they want to sacrifice them in war. The cost of their wars is always loaded onto the same backs, the peoples, the workers, the seafarers, the dockworkers, the refugees.
We demand:
1. An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and the opening of safe corridor for humanitarian aid.. An end of colonisation, occupation and apartheid imposed to Palestinian People and the recognition of an independent Palestinian state recognised by the internnational community on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
2. An end to the war in the Middle East. No support, no facilitation, no participation in the US-Israeli war against Iran, Lebanon or any other imperialist intervention. Military fleets and bases out of the region. We express our full solidarity to the people of Cuba and Venezuela and Sudan menaced by US imperialism and we call for defend peoples’s sovereignty, resources, territorial integrity, peace with justice and the right for resistance for self-determination..
3. Ports must not be used for the transport of weapons, ammunition, military equipment and troops. We call on unions to strengthen vigilance, to inform workers, to expose the cargoes of war, and to organize mass collective resistance with all our rightful available means and our struggle.
4. An end to the militarization of ports and critical infrastructure. Ports belong to the peoples and the workers. They are not bases for NATO, the USA or the EU, nor tools of shipowners and monopoly groups.
5. No to the war economy and armaments. The money must go to wages, collective agreements, health, education, social needs, and the protection of life and safety at work.
6. Health and safety measures in the workplaces. Not one worker dead for profits. An end to intensification, subcontracting, dangerous conditions and employer arbitrariness.
7. Collective agreements with real wage increases, stable jobs with rights, a retirement policy with better pensions, and a reduction of working time. Technological developments, mechanization, automation, the use of AI and the development of ports must serve the needs of workers, and not lead to the intensification of work or the disappearance of their jobs.
To strengthen the international coordination of dockworkers’ unions, it is common commitment the exchange of information between trade unions for common action, simultaneous mobilizations, and strike initiatives to sustain war and arms blockade and solidarity with every union attacked by governments, employers and mechanisms of repression.
In this meeting, the trade union partecipating agreed by signing this declaration to call for a second day of international struggle of dockworkers in the next october 2026.
From Istanbul we send the message:
Dockworkers will not make sacrifice for their profits and their wars.
We do not load death.
We do not transport bullets, bombs and missiles so that children can be killed.
We do not accept our ports being turned into war bases.
Workers will not pay for the war economy, inflation, armaments and the profits of the monopolies.
Our strength lies in organization. It lies in our unions, in general assemblies, in collective decisions, in solidarity among workers from different countries.
We, the workers in the ports, know very well that without us nothing moves. Without our hands, containers remain still, ships are not loaded, the war machines are blocked.
We call on all dockworkers’ unions to discuss this declaration, to strengthen our common steps, and to organize common actions, to strengthen solidarity bonds among ports.
The historic mobilization of 6th of february showed the way, the next one will make a step ahead!
Dockworkers do not work for war!
Ports of the peoples and the peace – not bases of the imperialists!
Signed by following trade unions:
Enedep – Greece
LAB – Euskadi
LIman-Is – Turkey
ODT – Moroc
USB – Italy
