Employment Court throws out Port of Napier injunction

The Employ­ment Court in Wel­ling­ton today declined to put an injunc­tion on pos­sible pick­ets by work­ers at the Port of Napi­er as pick­ets loom over the sum­mer.

Moves by the Port of Napi­er to con­tract out steve­doring work threaten 25 per­man­ent and 60 cas­u­al jobs, with work­ers to be thrown on the scrap heap just before Christ­mas.

The case was heard yes­ter­day under urgency, and the Employ­ment Court today ordered parties back to medi­ation.

The two water­front uni­ons, the Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and and the Rail and Mari­time Trans­port Uni­on, both appeared at the hear­ing, and were pleased by the res­ult.

Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and Gen­er­al Sec­ret­ary Tre­vor Han­son says the issues at stake are far wider than one Port and the situ­ation had already gone inter­na­tion­al.

“The issue here is wheth­er employ­ers can use con­tract­ing out to dis­mantle secure jobs, to attack wages and con­di­tions, to cas­u­al­ize jobs — and work­ers are going to take it to the wire.”

The work­ers whose jobs are threatened are Mari­time Uni­on mem­bers.

Mr Han­son says Port of Napi­er CEO Garth Cow­ie was badly mis­taken if he thought the issue was going to fizzle out.

“This situ­ation is going inter­na­tion­al, and the dam­age to the repu­ta­tion of his port is already being done. This is line in the sand stuff for work­ers and we won’t be back­ing down.”

The Uni­on had high level sup­port from the Coun­cil of Trade Uni­ons, the Mari­time Uni­on of Aus­tralia, and the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion, which rep­res­ents 4 500 000 affil­i­ated trans­port work­ers glob­ally.

Mr Han­son says the ITF are con­sid­er­ing declar­ing the Port of Napi­er a “port of con­veni­ence” ? a first for New Zea­l­and.

“This means the Port of Napi­er will come under a major inter­na­tion­al spot­light as part of an ongo­ing ITF glob­al cam­paign to pro­tect secure jobs, which will have a major impact on their abil­ity to suc­cess­fully func­tion as an inter­na­tion­al port.”

The port com­pany was already the tar­get of an inter­na­tion­al email cam­paign based in Lon­don  (www.labourstart.org/munz) with mes­sages pour­ing in from around the world.

Mr Han­son says that sub­stan­tial solid­ar­ity del­eg­a­tions of work­ers will be arriv­ing in Napi­er shortly to sup­port their fel­low work­ers, includ­ing a group from Aus­tralia.

RMTU Organ­iser Todd Val­ster says his mem­bers are stand­ing strong on crit­ic­al issues of health and safety.

“This is a Port with a very poor safety record, and con­tract­ing out to under trained work­ers puts every­one at risk”.

“We are not going to train up a under­skilled work­force to take the jobs of people who already do a great job.”