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Day: 30 September 2005

Department fiddles while crew members jump ship

The Mar­itime Union says the Depart­ment of Labour’s stance on two Viet­namese fish­er­men who have jumped ship in Nel­son is unac­cept­able.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the Depart­ment of Labour has stat­ed in the media it will not act until for­mal­ly noti­fied by the fish­ing ves­sel char­ter­ers that crew mem­bers are miss­ing.

“In this case, the two miss­ing crew mem­bers have obvi­ous­ly jumped ship from the Sky 75, like the ten Indone­sian crew mem­bers before them, and these two fish­er­men are prob­a­bly liv­ing rough.”

Free trade deals could mean overseas labour trafficking in ports

The Mar­itime Union says that free trade deals and recent GATS nego­ti­a­tions have the poten­tial to intro­duce cut­price over­seas labour into New Zealand ports.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the use of ship’s crews and import­ed labour on the water­front is becom­ing a major prob­lem around the world.

“Inter­na­tion­al mar­itime com­pa­nies are already mov­ing low-wage, short term and casu­al labour across bor­ders to work in ports around the world.”