Labour
Ivorian Dock Workers Suspend Week-old Strike
By Reuters 18/3/08
Mar 19, 2008 - 10:19:28 AM

"We restarted work this morning," Fidele Dogba of the day workers' union Sytrajop-CI, which had launched the strike last week, told Reuters. He said the union had been talking since late on Monday with the country's Labour Ministry.

"As a prelude to pursuing negotiations, they asked us ... to suspend the strike ... and we accepted," Dogba said.

Although the strike took place at the tail end of the October to March main crop, it left truckloads of cocoa beans unloaded at the main ports of Abidjan and San Pedro in the world's top cocoa grower. Exporters had said they were worried about the beans spoiling.

Nevertheless, some exporters said support for the strike was only partial in the western port of San Pedro and some cocoa suppliers had already started sending their trucks there.