It is not often we see such historic moments of action as the port and dock workers are taking today, October 30, 2026, and yet we hear very little about it in the media, perhaps not surprisingly. Seafarers, dock and port workers in across more than 100 ports around the world are taking part in different forms of direct action ranging from 24-hour strikes to two-hour work stoppages.This unprecedented scale of mobilisation is unheard of in the recent past and is spread across from North Europe to South Asia, with the Mediterranean ports playing a crucial role as transshipment hubs for war cargo.The first such ‘International Day of Action’ took place on February 6, 2026, when trade unions in over 20 ports in the Mediterranean disrupted war cargo, causing heavy losses to the shipping companies and forcing them to reroute their cargo. Since then, the movement has only grown and now it has reached over 100 ports, including the ports on the coast of India.According to the information updated on the ‘No Harbour for Genocide’ website till late last night, direct action would be undertaken in 15 ports led by the Forward Seamen’s Union of India (FSUI) and the Water Transport Workers Federation of India (WTWFI), both of which are affiliated to the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU).Members of the All India Peace and Solidarity Organisation, Mumbai, raising their voices against the supply of arms to Israel and standing for peace.The port and dock workers across the world are considered to be one of the militant sections of the working class, considering their spatial location of the port which happens to be a melting pot of not only ideas but also diverse cultural imaginations. Their histories across different ports of the world are replete with actions of global solidarity, not only against war but also against colonialism.Many historians have documented such moments of solidarity of port and dock workers which included collecting funds for workers striking in a port in a different continent, refusing to load and unload cargo from apartheid era South Africa, and refusing to handle ships which were diverted from a port where workers were striking. The port and dock workers in India too, have a rich history of global solidarity when they refused to handle war cargo during the India-Pakistan wars in the 1960s.Continuing in that traditions, the WTWFI issued a statement in February 2024, four months into the genocide of Palestine by Gaza, that their member-workers would boycott any ships carrying ammunition to Israel. The statement clearly advocated resistance to war and genocide and in terms never seen before or advocated by any other Indian trade union, even as of today.This obviously raised the eyebrows of the central intelligence agencies and the police which swooped on to the unions offices in the weeks to follow making life hard not only for the trade union organisers but also the rank and file workers in carrying forward their trade union work. Despite these limitations, both the WTWFI and the FSUI are joining the global day of action and struggle called by the World Federation of Trade Unions.A glimpse of the Mumbai Port Trust Kamgar Ekta Union’s flag.In fact, the memory of port and dock workers in India is marked with a ghastly explosion of a ship carrying war cargo on April 14, 1944 in Bombay port, killing more than 1,000 workers and injuring over 3,000 workers. The life of seafarers, port and dock workers is hard because of the nature of cargo handling work, which is rife with danger.The safety of dock work was closely regulated by the colonial and post-colonial state and is one of the few work spaces which has a separate legislation for itself, to reduce accidents, damage and compensation. Carrying ammunition and inflammable cargo related to war further makes the life of a port worker much more susceptible to injury and death.As we have seen from the recent months, the US war on Iran and the Russia-Ukraine war took lives of 64 seafarers and injured more than 100 of them, in just 2026 alone. The rallying cry of the workers – ‘we do not work for war’ and ‘ports for peace, jobs with dignity’ – represents this sentiment against the ports and ships being turned into military bases and against the arms, ammunition, military equipment and troops being sent to wars through ports. Instead, they demand secure jobs, real wages and health and safety measures against increased automation of ports.Between 2012 and 2024, the permanent employment in the major ports in India fell by 67.4%, with a further 18.5% decline since 2024. This is appalling considering that the port and dock workers are known to have spearheaded the movement against contractual employment since the 1940s till the 1990s, when the structures of permanent employment were being slowly dismantled. The rise of contractual workers in the ports and the increased overtime of the workers has also led to an increase in the accidents.The Basic Port Statistics released by the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways suggests that the number of accidents in major ports have consistently increased since 2021.At the CITU office, where solidarity, collective action and support for important causes come together.Amidst the struggle for better working conditions and better welfare benefits, the workers coming out onto the streets tomorrow for resisting wars and genocide deserves support from the civil society and the public at large. More than making war, peace and genocide a moral question for a bleeding heart, the port workers and their trade unions realise that this is a political question and the struggle for better working conditions is intrinsically linked with the struggle against militarisation.This is not the first time when war economy and rearmament is booted up by the ruling classes by increasing weapon budgets and by cutting down on welfare and social security measures. When capitalism repeatedly plunged into crisis in the late 19th century and in the 20th century, the dominant sections of capital have always looked at militarisation as a way to reorganise and restructure capitalism.Many historians and scholars have convincingly argued how the long depression between 1873-1896 led to World War I and how the Great Depression of 1929 led to World War 2. With the crisis of neo-liberal capitalism looming since 2008 and the crisis only deepening since then, the mediated and negotiated wars since 2014 between Russia-Ukraine, the genocide in Palestine by Israel and the civil war in Sudan amongst others is a reflection of the crisis of the old world dying and a new world struggling to be born.The international action by port and dock workers could possibly throw some light on the new world and give a direction to the rest of us struggling from hopelessness.Rahul Maganti is a PhD student at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen.Dr Siddharth Chakravarthy is a researcher on maritime industries.