30th October International day of action: ‘Dockworkers don’t work for war’

PRESS RELEASE | For immediate release | 30 October 2026

• On Friday 30 October, dockworkers in 113 ports across 22 countries will take action against war in the largest coordinated port action ever held.
• More than 25 unions on five continents will refuse to handle weapons shipments to Israel, in 24-hour strikes and other actions.
• The ports taking part handle 13.5% of global shipping and 63% of all container activity in the Mediterranean, including the transhipment hubs on which Israel’s supply chain depends.
• In the ports striking for 24 hours, 52,000 containers will be halted and $2.8 billion worth of cargo will not move.
• This delay will cost $57,000,000, and that is before taking into account the cascading delays the following day, the general strike in Italy, and the greater number of ports striking for two hours.

There are 24-hour strikes in France, Italy, Greece and Türkiye, stoppages in Morocco, Cyprus and other countries, a general strike in Italy, and rallies outside port gates in dozens of cities. The first international day of action, on 6 February this year, involved 20 ports in seven countries and stopped five suspect ships. Friday’s action is more than five times larger and, for the first time, reaches outside Europe and the Mediterranean to India, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and the US West Coast. It follows years of organising by the dockworkers’ unions, which have met in Athens, Genoa and Istanbul since February 2025 to build an international dockworkers’ movement.

The action falls one year into a ceasefire that has not stopped the killing. At least 1,400 Palestinians have been confirmed killed in Gaza since it came into force, with many more under the rubble. In the West Bank, settlements keep expanding and Palestinians in Hebron and beyond are being driven from their homes, imprisoned and beaten. Southern Lebanon is bombed daily, with whole villages made uninhabitable, and southern Syria is under occupation. Up to 95% of Israel’s imports and exports travel by sea, and in those same twelve months, every month, commercial ports kept supplying the Israeli military. No Harbour for Genocide, a collective of organisers and researchers that exposes the supply chain of arms, dual-use goods and energy to Israel and other wars, with the aim of disrupting it, is supporting the day with research. It has documented 315 consignments of components for Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, passing through 56 commercial ports in 29 countries between August 2025 and September 2026. Many of the ports on that list are the ports whose workers are striking today.

For two years, dockworkers have stopped this cargo one ship at a time. Workers in Tangier held bombs bound for Israel for more than two months in late 2024. Piraeus dockers blocked weapons shipments four times. Le Havre refused 18 tonnes of cannon barrels for Elbit last December. In Livorno, only a few days ago, workers and activists stalled the Sunaid X, a container ship that local unions identified as a supplier of the NATO base at Sigonella. In April, mobilisations of workers and social movements in Spain, Greece, Türkiye, and Italy led to three MSC vessels being denied service one after another until 23 containers of Indian military steel were seized in Italy, where they remain; by NHG’s calculation the steel was enough for 13,000 artillery shells.

Every time, Israeli arms manufacturers and shipping companies look for new ways to avoid disruption. Sometimes they use transhipment hubs in places like Egypt, where the crackdown on workers and protesters is harsh. Private munitions ships chartered by Israel now load Elbit’s cargo at Nhava Sheva to avoid the multiple port calls along the way. In April this year, aerospace parts from Castellón in Spain travelled by road to Lisbon to get around Spain’s arms embargo. A blockade in a single port costs the shipper a delay and a change of route. On Friday, dockworkers in 113 ports stop at the same time, so there is nowhere to reroute to. In India, WTWFI is taking action in 11 ports and Coordinadora in Spain is taking action in 15 ports including Valencia, Algeciras and Barcelona. Workers will also take action in Hamburg (ver.di), in 11 Swedish ports (Svenska Hamnarbetarförbundet), in Aarhus and Copenhagen (3F), in Melbourne (the Maritime Union of Australia) and in Oakland and San Francisco (ILWU Local 10).

The day was called by the dockworkers’ unions coalition ‘Dockworkers Don’t Work for War’. The reasoning is the dockworkers’ own. A cargo refused in one port sails on to the next. Refused in every port, it stops, and the workers have enforced the embargo that governments announced and did not.

Embargoes on paper

The cargo keeps moving in spite of stated embargoes. Spain bans arms exports to Israel; in 14 months its ports let ships carrying military cargo for Elbit dock 26 times. Türkiye announced an embargo on all trade with Israel in May 2024. In a report published in April 2026, No Harbour for Genocide, the Palestinian Youth Movement, Progressive International and Energy Embargo for Palestine showed that between May 2024 and December 2025 at least 57 covert shipments of crude oil (some 47 million barrels) left the Ceyhan terminal for Israel. Ceyhan supplies around 40% of Israel’s crude oil, which goes to the refineries contracted to produce diesel and jet fuel for the Israeli military. The Turkish government has denied the shipments at least three times, despite satellite imagery and AIS ship-tracking data that confirm them. The embargoes exist on paper. The dockworkers’ refusals are the only measures that have stopped cargo. The same shipping lines, charterers and arms companies appear in the data again and again. They earn billions from the trade; the workers who move it carry the risk.

Ports as military bases

The militarisation of public infrastructure harms the communities on the receiving end of the violence, in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen, and the communities whose ports are being converted. Between December 2025 and September 2026, NHG tracked 3,400 shipments of cargo supplying US military bases through 67 ports in 42 countries. In the weeks after the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, that cargo rose by up to 1,000% through Antwerp, Civitavecchia, Piraeus, Bremerhaven and Rotterdam. Antwerp-Bruges went from 200 to 2,000 tonnes a month, much of it bound for Ramstein, the US air base in Germany that flies it on to bases in the Gulf. The same port has set aside 120,000 square metres and 250 million euros for NATO tanks and ammunition containers, to be activated within 30 days of a mobilisation order.

That is why the dockworkers’ demands, set out in the Istanbul Declaration agreed by unions from more than 35 ports in May 2026, go beyond any single shipment:

• an immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and to all imperialist wars;
• no arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops sent to war through their ports;
• no ports turned into military bases, no to rearmament and the war economy;
• in place of weapons budgets: health and safety at work, real wages, secure jobs, and no automation that replaces dockworkers.

What it costs them

Workers who stop this cargo pay for it. In Morocco, eight dockworkers were made to resign after protesting an F-35 parts call at Tanger Med. In Sweden, on the day the Labour Court ruled the Gothenburg dockers’ boycott lawful, the union’s deputy chair was sacked on national security grounds. In Greece, the president of the ENEDEP dockers’ union faces prosecution for stopping ammunition. Italian unions carry fines and court cases, and Genoa dockers have been prosecuted for their 2019 stoppage. The dockworkers called this action and will face the consequences after the 30th. This is why we are asking the public to follow their lead on the day.

The refusal is not confined to the docks. As economies are reorganised around war, the same choice reaches truckers, researchers, public servants and everyone else whose work keeps the supply chain moving. Militarisation is sold to workers as national industry and the defence of their jobs. The dockworkers’ answer is a grassroots, worker-led internationalist movement that treats the war abroad and the cost of living at home as part of the same problem, and refuses racism, nationalism or rearmament as the solution to either. The violence in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan and Iran and the squeeze on wages and heating at home come from the same system, and the unions have said they will keep organising against it after today’s historic action.

What the day costs the war economy

The Mediterranean strikes alone halt around 52,000 containers. At the UN standard of roughly $54,000 of goods per container, that is at least $2.8 billion of cargo delayed on 30 October. The direct cost of the day runs up to $57 million, before the following day’s backlog, the Italian general strike and the 2 hour stoppages across multiple ports are counted.

ENDS

Notes to editors

1. No Harbour for Genocide is a collective of organisers and researchers that exposes the supply chain of arms, dual-use goods and energy to Israel and other wars.
2. Full list of ports taking action, grouped by country and city with times and meeting points where confirmed, and in English, Spanish, Arabic, Italian, French, Turkish and Greek: 30october.noharbourforgenocide.com. Each entry says whether a dockworkers’ union or another group is organising, and whether NHG has documented arms transfers through that port.
3. The Istanbul Declaration (May 2026), with the full demands and signatories: PDF.
4. Launch press conference, Rome, 15 October 2026. The unions presented the day of action; watch the recording and read the text distributed to the press, written in collaboration with NHG. All figures in this release are drawn from that text and from NHG’s tracking data.
5. NHG’s live shipment tracker and blocklist: tracker.noharbourforgenocide.com and noharbourforgenocide.com/blocklist.
6. Footage and images. Posters in seven languages are at the link above. Footage from ports on the day will be gathered and can be made available to media on request; contact us to request material.

Media contact: info@noharbourforgenocide.com | Instagram @noharbour4genocide

On the day, follow the unions directly: @portsinaction, @calp_genova, @unionesindacaledibase, @labsindikatua, @limanissendikasi.