Last Kiwi crew on trans-Tasman vessel stage shipboard protest

Mem­bers of the Mar­itime Union are stag­ing a protest today on board a ves­sel at the Ports of Auck­land.

Mar­itime Union Auck­land Sea­far­ers Branch Sec­re­tary Gar­ry Parsloe says the crew mem­bers start­ed their protest on the trans-Tas­man freighter Rotoiti at the Ports of Auck­land Bledis­loe Ter­mi­nal at 7am this morn­ing Sat­ur­day 4 Novem­ber 2006.

He says the crew are draw­ing atten­tion to the fact that when the Rotoiti is with­drawn from ser­vice on 26 Novem­ber, it will be the end of the last New Zealand crewed ship work­ing on the trans-Tas­man trade.

“The ves­sel is going yet the car­go remains, but the jobs are threat­ened, and these New Zealand sea­far­ers want to have some work in their own trans-Tas­man trade.”

Mr Parsloe says it was not a redun­dan­cy sit­u­a­tion as the work was still there, but would be going to oth­er ves­sels – none of which have any New Zealand crew mem­bers.

He says the crew want jobs for New Zealand sea­far­ers on the trans-Tas­man trade and were stag­ing their action to get dia­logue with the employ­er.

The ves­sel is cur­rent­ly owned by inter­na­tion­al ship­ping line Hapag Lloyd but since 1999, crew have been under Anglo-East­ern ship man­age­ment.

Mr Parsloe says the sit­u­a­tion is a shock­ing one, con­sid­er­ing the impor­tance of ship­ping to New Zealand as an eco­nom­i­cal­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly effi­cient trans­port mode.

“We are in a sit­u­a­tion where New Zealand car­go is being car­ried, but there is no work for our own peo­ple.”

New Zealand sea­far­ers had worked on the Rotoiti since 1975.

He says that the nation­al con­fer­ence of the Mar­itime Union in Octo­ber had com­mit­ted to action on the issue.

The Mar­itime Union had been in con­tact with over­seas mar­itime unions for assis­tance with the mat­ter.

The Mar­itime Union has chal­lenged all ship­ping com­pa­nies to rec­og­nize their social respon­si­bil­i­ty towards New Zealand crews, and has deter­mined to main­tain New Zealand sea­far­ers on ves­sels that car­ry car­go on the trans-Tas­man and inter­na­tion­al trade.