Europe's Striking Summer

Rising fuel and food costs, the threat of job losses and disputes over pensions and pay are just some of the factors that helped spark a surge in industrial action across Europe this summer. Thousands of disgruntled workers took to the picket lines, piling the pressure on employers and governments as the summer-strike season heated up.

Italy's top football league authority proposed delaying the start of their season by a few weeks, after talks with television representatives over the sharing of tax revenue fell through, despite appeals for government intervention on the footballers' behalf.

Hundreds of Lufthansa flights were cancelled during a five-day strike in which 4,000 ground staff and cabin crew demanded higher wages to cope with increases in the daily cost of living. A salary increase was agreed upon, though it fell short of the 10 percent that was initially sought.

In one of many inflation-related direct actions that occurred across Europe this summer, roughly 90,000 Spanish lorry drivers protested against the rising cost of fuel by blockading roads in Spain and France, causing endless traffic jams and consumer concern of shortages of food and goods at local stores.

Also because of soaring fuel prices, fishers in Spain and Portugal intentionally kept their boats docked during the normally productive spring and summer seasons, as profits from their catches likely would not offset the overhead of keeping their fleets afloat. They also freely gave away their remaining inventory of fish to garner support for their plight.

Rail service -- including high-speed business commuter trains -- that connect many European cities was disrupted in June when a Belgian rail workers' union called a one-day strike to oppose a plan by one rail corporation to lay off 10,000 of its workers within a year's time. Many business travelers were stranded or delayed for hours.

A labor dispute resulted in a shutdown of the Grangemouth Refinery in Scotland, one of the U.K.'s oldest oil plants. The owner of the refinery proposed that new employees would need to contribute a percentage of their salary to their own pension plans, unlike existing employees, who enjoyed the prospect of a contribution-free pension upon retirement. The strike caused a run at petrol stations in Scotland and other U.K. regions that have their oil shipped from Grangemouth.

Nearly all members of the largest German milk farmers' union halted their dairy production and disposed of their existing inventory rather than deliver it to their customers as usual, to voice their frustration over the record low prices of milk and other related commodities. Milk farmers throughout Europe supported the strike and many followed suit.

Fed up after years of receiving what they feel to be inadequate salaries, German workers of all occupations and industries -- but primarily public and transport sectors -- staged a series of strikes this summer throughout the Republic. Discontented workers contended that work hours are longer and cost of living higher than in years past, but wages have not kept pace accordingly.


Click to Restart 'Europe's Striking Summer' Slideshow