French dockworkers on Friday called a 48-hour strike for next week to protest government plans for radical port reform. The strike, planned for Tuesday and Wednesday, will close down seven ports, including France's two largest container hubs, Le Havre and Marseilles, which were already bracing for a 36-hour stoppage by rail workers on the same days.

The powerful CGT union, which represents most French longshoremen, on Friday hinted at further protests to press the government to enter negotiations over its reform plan.

The government announced in January that it wants to privatize stevedoring in seven of France's nine publicly-owned ports as part of a program to triple the country's container traffic by 2015.

France has been under pressure from ocean carriers and shippers to make its ports more efficient, but successive governments have shelved reforms because of the threat of strikes by the country's unionized workforce.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon has said legislation to privatize cargo handling will be presented to Parliament before the end of June.Unions are particularly angered by government plans to transfer dockworkers currently employed by port authorities, who enjoy privileged civil service status, to the private sector. These include container crane and gantry operators and maintenance workers who were not included in a 1992 agreement that made dockworkers employees of private stevedores. Fillon has said the reform will help to boost France's annual container traffic from 6 million TEUs to 10 million TEUs by 2015 and create 30,000 new jobs on the waterfront.

The other five ports affected by today's strike call are: Dunkirk, Rouen, Nantes-St Nazaire, Bordeaux and La Rochelle.

(Excerpt from the Journal of Commerce)