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.

Mr Han­son says the best way to reduce crime and social break­down is sta­ble employ­ment for New Zealand work­ers and their fam­i­lies, which were under attack from job loss­es, casu­al­iza­tion, low wages, shift work and increas­ing eco­nom­ic and social pres­sures.

“New Zealan­ders needs secure jobs, not jail cells.”

Dur­ing the June 2009 quar­ter, the num­ber of peo­ple unem­ployed reached 138,000, accord­ing to Sta­tis­tics New Zealand. In the last year, the num­ber of unem­ployed has grown by 48,000.

Mr Han­son says the Gov­ern­ment has canned any invest­ment in coastal ship­ping in favour of irre­spon­si­bly push­ing heavy truck­ing, which will clog high­ways and push up green­house gas emis­sions.

He says the fish­ing indus­try is also anoth­er “dis­as­ter area” for jobs.

He says recent rev­e­la­tions in the TV doc­u­men­tary “The Great New Zealand Fish­ing Scan­dal” showed how New Zealand’s nat­ur­al resources had been plun­dered by over­seas fish­ing ves­sels work­ing in joint ven­tures with New Zealand quo­ta hold­ers.

The use of under­paid and often mis­treat­ed over­seas crews kept costs down for the oper­a­tors, while New Zealan­ders had been forced out of the indus­try.

“The Gov­ern­ment of New Zealand should be doing some­thing about jobs for New Zealan­ders. There is noth­ing to proud of in the new low they have sunk to where we can incar­cer­ate New Zealan­ders in ship­ping con­tain­ers but not have them work­ing in our mar­itime indus­try.”

Mr Han­son says “cab­o­tage” on the New Zealand coast would reserve coastal ship­ping for New Zealand ship­ping, and the “New Zealan­diza­tion” of the fish­ing indus­try would mean the same in that sec­tor.

This would mean greater abil­i­ty to reg­u­late and ensure that New Zealand work­ers had employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in their own indus­try with secure, union­ized jobs and decent wages and con­di­tions.