Hope you're well. I've been in touch with a member of the dockworkers union at Piraeus, which is continuing to contest the port's privatization. At this point, one of the port's three terminals has been sold to the Chinese state-owned company COSCO, which is looking to buy up the remaining two in the future. The union has basically been broken at that terminal under COSCO's jurisdiction, and as you can imagine, the conditions there are considerably worse.�

 

Giorgos has asked me if we can circulate this information to the island associations in Astoria, given that the privatization of Peiraias has implications for islands, like connections and inspections and so forth. I warned him that they are conservative and probably unsympathetic to the cause. I am wondering, however, what we could do overall from here. I'll be Skyping with him soon, but if anyone has ideas, am all ears.

 

Peace,

Nantina