Some 60 people were hurt on Tuesday in two violent clashes between dockyard workers and police in the southern Spanish city of Seville and at nearby Cadiz, as workers protested at near empty order books, local government and union officials said.
The incidents occurred at dockyards owned by the state-run Izar group, whose drop in orders the company blames variously on Asian competition, the soaring euro rate and workers' demands for higher pay.
According to Union spokesman Luis Espada, 38 workers were hurt in Seville, with three hospitalised after police in riot gear used tear gas and rubber bullets to break up the protest. Espada said two were hit in the eye and another in the testicles.
Local government officials said a dozen policemen were also injured and added another 10 policemen had been slightly hurt at another dockyard in Puerto Real, in the adjacent southern province de Cadiz.
The incidents followed hot on the heels of protests last week at dockyards in the Basque region of northern Spain and at Ferrol in the far north-western region of Galicia.
The Izar firm has suffered from poor new orders in recent months, prompting several waves of unrest.
Workers say Izar has failed to respect agreements to produce contracts following a recent merger of military and civilian dockyards.
Union leaders said in a statement Tuesday afternoon they were calling on their members' employers to promise "not to close a single site."
Ignacio Ruiz-Jarabo, chairman of Spain's State Society of Industrial Participation (SEPI), which owns Izar, blamed "unfair Asian competition and the euro-dollar exchange rate" for the company's problems with the tumbling dollar and soaring euro combining to hit competitively.
However, a spokesman for Izar last week pinned the much of the blame for the tension on work-force demands for an inflation-busting 6.8 percent pay rise.
An Izar spokesman in Madrid said the firm, which employs some 11,000 workers, had received no orders for merchant ships in 2003 but that existing military orders should provide sufficient work at some of the sites through to 2010.
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