Denied by dock workers, diesel ship bobs Sunny Liger since this weekend off the Dutch coast. At the same time, at least eight other tankers with Russian oil and oil products are sailing towards Rotterdam. Five of them have already reported to the Port of Rotterdam Authority. They are expected to sail in without any problems in the coming days.
The Ukrainian embassy calls for these ships to be refused as well. But the call seems to go unheeded. “As long as they are not subject to the sanctions, the ships are welcome in Rotterdam,” said a spokesman for the Port of Rotterdam Authority. In Brussels, European member states have been arguing for weeks about sanctioning Russian oil, but oil products are not yet on the list. Even today, the countries did not come out.
‘Boycott legally impossible’
Unlike the Sunny Liger, the Ukrainian embassy does not seem to have to count on help from the trade unions. The dock workers did not want to unload that ship out of solidarity with their Swedish colleagues, who previously refused the ship.
“Where governments threaten to fail, and they are currently doing so, employees can make the difference,” said Niek Stam of FNV Havens. “And they did that, I’m proud of that.”
But boycotting all Russian ships or ships with Russian cargo is not legally possible, says FNV Havens. The union does not dare, for fear of losing lawsuits from ship owners. However, the union calls on individual dock workers to act as ‘conscientious objector‘ to report. They are then temporarily transferred to other work.
In Sweden they view the legal reality differently. “Just as the Dutch could refuse the Sunny Liger by showing solidarity with us, we are refusing all Russian ships and cargo by showing solidarity with Ukraine and the workers there,” said Martin Berg, chairman of the Swedish Dockworkers’ Union.
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