Date: Thursday, April 24, 2008

Re:	France – Strike Update

Received below regarding strike in France :

The Cabinet Ministers approved the port reform project today and will present it to Parliament mid-May. Each port is requested to prepare their own plan to transfer their staff to private operators so that all port operations will be under the same management. The ports have 3 months to present their plan and then 2 years to complete the transition. This timing had already been made clear to the Port Authorities and to the Unions weeks ago. 

The Unions reaction so far has been to say that they will meet next week only and that in the meantime they will organise strikes along the same lines as this week, i.e. all-out strike on Wednesday April 30th, no night shifts Thursday and Friday plus strike on Saturday. May 1st is a public holiday so they will not work Thursday either. We will provide more details on Thursday April 24th.