“Transport companies and their employees are prepared to go to the barricades,” Bernward Franzky, head of Lower Saxony’s transport association told DPA.
Franzky said that although a strike isn’t being planned, demonstrations and other forms of protest could lead to supply shortages in shops and supermarkets. He added that Lower Saxony alone is in danger of losing as many as 5,000 jobs in the transport sector.
“The price of diesel is catastrophic for the transport sector,” Franzky said. “Most companies are in the red.”
He said the industry had little choice but to pass on the high price of fuel to customers in the form of more expensive consumer goods. Additionally, the sector would push to halt a planned increase in road tolls for trucks from 13.5 to 16.3 cents per kilometer in order to stem job losses.
“Companies are clearly saying that they can’t take it any longer,” Franzky said. “We’re not going to call for any action that would cause us to do something illegal, like block the highways with our trucks, but we’ll find other ways.”
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