Category: In the news

War on the Wharves: Spanish Dock Workers Fight Government

Span­ish ports are bat­ten­ing down the hatch­es, brac­ing for mas­sive union strikes against a right-wing gov­ern­ment deter­mined to impose casu­al­i­sa­tion at any cost. 

‘Greedy wharfies’ tale hides ambitions for port

Union­ist Matt McCarten pro­vides a good analy­sis of some of the issues around the Ports of Auck­land dis­pute in his New Zealand Her­ald col­umn.

Port bosses sensitive to show of union power

Polit­i­cal colum­nist Chris Trot­ter writes today on the Ports of Auck­land dis­pute how “a vic­to­ry for the union at this point in the dis­pute could only be inter­pret­ed as a vic­to­ry for all unionised work­ers.”

Maritime Union message of support for ILWU Port of Longview workers

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand sup­ports the ILWU strug­gle for decent jobs at the Port of Longview.

Maritime Union offers solidarity to Japan

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand has offered its sym­pa­thy and sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Japan fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake and tsuna­mi of 11 March.

Solidarity with Pike River miners

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand has offered its sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty to the Pike Riv­er min­ers.

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.

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.

Fonterra and shipping companies held up to scrutiny

The Mar­itime Union’s com­ments on the effect on ports of deci­sions by Fonter­ra and ship­ping com­pa­nies have fea­tured wide­ly in the news.

TVNZ reports that “the Mar­itime Union of New Zealand is call­ing for nation­al co-ordi­na­tion of port strat­e­gy, argu­ing that Fonter­ra is exert­ing such pow­er as a cus­tomer it is effec­tive­ly ratio­nal­is­ing the port indus­try.”

The Tarana­ki Dai­ly News writes that “Zealand’s water­front work­ers and sea­far­ers have sav­aged Fonter­ra’s deci­sion to drop Port Tarana­ki, warn­ing it has the poten­tial to ‘rip the guts out’ of the port” fol­low­ing a “a bomb­shell deci­sion last week, the dairy giant said it would be rail­ing Whareroa prod­uct to Auck­land and Tau­ran­ga instead.”

Unions oppose increasing GST

The Coun­cil of Trade Union says a pro­pos­al to increase in GST would hit low income earn­ers hard.