Year: 2009

International maritime workers represented at Maritime Union 2009 Conference

Mar­itime work­ers from around the world have gath­ered in Welling­ton this week as the Mar­itime Union of New Zealand holds its third tri­en­ni­al con­fer­ence.

The three day con­fer­ence sets the agen­da for the next three years of the Union and runs through to Thurs­day 29 Octo­ber.

The con­fer­ence was opened this morn­ing by Leader of the Oppo­si­tion Phil Goff.

Redundancy plan at Port Chalmers will be resisted

Union mem­bers at Port Chalmers are vow­ing to resist redun­dan­cy threats. 35 jobs have been put at risk after man­age­ment announce­ments, despite Port Otago’s ongo­ing prof­itabil­i­ty.

A full report is online here at the Ota­go Dai­ly Times.

Maritime Union thanks Sue Bradford for her support for workers

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand has thanked Green MP Sue Brad­ford, who announced her res­ig­na­tion from Par­lia­ment today, for her sup­port for work­ers and those with­out a voice in the polit­i­cal process.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says Sue Brad­ford was a friend of the Mar­itime Union and all work­ers.

“Sue was a prin­ci­ple dri­ven politi­cian dur­ing her time in Par­lia­ment who was ahead of her time and who pro­vid­ed a con­trast to many oth­er face­less rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”

Heavy trucking plan a “roadhog’s charter”

The Mar­itime Union is back­ing Green Par­ty calls for the Gov­ern­ment to recon­sid­er its push to put over­sized trucks on New Zealand roads.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the Gov­ern­ment is obvi­ous­ly not con­cerned at the extra deaths and injuries that will occur as a result on New Zealand roads.

Timaru port meeting resounding success

Over 100 local peo­ple attend­ed a Timaru pub­lic meet­ing on the future of the port of Timaru on Thurs­day 17 Sep­tem­ber.

The meet­ing was called by the Mar­itime Union of New Zealand fol­low­ing a deci­sion last month by Fonter­ra to stop exports from the port of Timaru, which has result­ed in a mas­sive loss of work for the port.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the meet­ing was a suc­cess.

Timaru meeting to defend port gathers steam

Today’s Timaru Her­ald fea­tures the Timaru pub­lic meet­ing this Thurs­day 17 Sep­tem­ber as their lead sto­ry.

Read the full sto­ry here.

Public Meeting for Port of Timaru – Thursday 17 September 2009

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand is host­ing a pub­lic meet­ing on the future of the Port of Timaru. The meet­ing will be held at “Rob­bies” (Hibern­ian Hotel), Lat­ter Street, Timaru on Thurs­day 17 Sep­tem­ber start­ing at 7.30pm sharp.

All con­cerned local peo­ple are invit­ed to the meet­ing, includ­ing port work­ers, unions, busi­ness, indus­try, farm­ers, and all those con­cerned with the future of the port.

For more infor­ma­tion see the Port of Timaru cam­paign web­site.

Where does Minister of Transport Steven Joyce stand in regional ports furore?

The Mar­itime Union is ask­ing where the Gov­ern­ment and the Min­is­ter of Trans­port stands on the future of region­al ports after Fonter­ra announced it was with­draw­ing from some region­al ports in favour of trans­port­ing goods by long dis­tance rail last month.

Jobs are under threat, casu­al­iza­tion is hit­ting work­ers hard, and the via­bil­i­ty of region­al ports is under a cloud after the deci­sion, which has cre­at­ed intense debate in the regions and the trans­port indus­try.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the union’s nation­al exec­u­tive met with a Fonter­ra rep­re­sen­ta­tive ear­li­er this week.

Answers needed on KiwiRail – Fonterra deal

Car­toon cour­tesy of the Ship­ping Gazette

The Mar­itime Union has stepped up its demand for answers as fall­out con­tin­ues from Fonter­ra’s dump­ing of region­al ports in favour of long dis­tance rail – and the influ­ence that state sub­si­dies to KiwiRail may have had on any deal.

KiwiRail has wad­ed into the grow­ing debate over the fate of region­al ports, as the impli­ca­tions of Fonter­ra’s with­draw­al from ports in New Ply­mouth and Timaru becomes appar­ent.

Government can put New Zealanders in containers, but it can’t give them jobs shipping them

The Mar­itime Union has a mes­sage for the Gov­ern­ment: instead of jail­ing New Zealan­ders in con­tain­ers, it would be bet­ter to have them work­ing on the con­tain­ers by rebuild­ing coastal ship­ping.

Cor­rec­tions Min­is­ter Judith Collins announced today a “con­tain­er unit” will be set up at Rimu­ta­ka Prison to house surg­ing num­bers of pris­on­ers, the lat­est embar­rass­ing step in New Zealand’s fail­ure to con­front the real issues behind crime.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says New Zealand work­ers have been forced out of mar­itime employ­ment in their own coun­try by allow­ing over­seas labour to be exploit­ed on the New Zealand coastal waters.

He says that due to the “open coast” pol­i­cy intro­duced by Nation­al in the 1990s New Zealand had seen its ship­ping indus­try tak­en apart, while many oth­er coun­tries reserved their domes­tic mer­chant ship­ping and fish­eries for local indus­try.