Government should back vital workforce over Swiss multinationals

The Mar­itime Union has today called for the Gov­ern­ment to reject an appli­ca­tion by Swiss-based ship­ping com­pa­ny Nova to be exempt­ed from the legal require­ment for New Zealand coastal ves­sels to be New Zealand flagged.

The call comes as Nova’s fel­low Swiss multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny, Hol­cim, moves to scrap its New Zealand flagged ves­sel MV Buf­fa­lo and sack its New Zealand based crew in favour of using Nova’s “flag of con­ve­nience” Pana­man­ian flagged ser­vice to trans­port its cement domes­ti­cal­ly.

This would bypass New Zealand legal pro­tec­tions for crew includ­ing those pro­vid­ed by employ­ment and envi­ron­men­tal law.

MUNZ Nation­al Sec­re­tary Carl Find­lay says the appli­ca­tion to be exempt­ed is a test of the gov­ern­men­t’s loy­al­ties.

“This Gov­ern­ment needs to ask itself – does it back the 32 Kiwi sea­far­ers on the Buf­fa­lo and New Zealand’s vital ship­ping indus­try, or does it give a free pass to two Swiss multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies look­ing to make a few more dol­lars at the expense of its crew’s safe­ty and secu­ri­ty, and yet anoth­er hit on New Zealand’s sup­ply chain secu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic sov­er­eign­ty?”

Mr Find­lay says the Min­is­ter of Trans­port James Mea­ger is refus­ing to meet with the sea­far­ers and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives until after the “appli­ca­tion process has con­clud­ed”.

“He seems to want to wait until New Zealand sea­far­ers are sacked to get involved, rather than step­ping up.”

Mr Find­lay says New Zealand is an island nation fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant risk to the mar­itime sup­ply chains we rely on to trans­port 99% of our phys­i­cal exports to mar­ket.

He says any fur­ther reduc­tion of our skills and capac­i­ty in this sec­tor increas­es that risk.

“Grant­i­ng this exemp­tion would be an act of eco­nom­ic sab­o­tage.”

“This isn’t a com­pli­cat­ed sit­u­a­tion. It’s a sim­ple choice. The Gov­ern­ment can grant this exemp­tion from New Zealand law and harm these work­ers and our mar­itime indus­try, or they can do the right thing and make sure that this work is done on a New Zealand flagged ship with a work­force pro­tect­ed by New Zealand law.”