Maritime Union confirms Ports of Auckland strike action

The Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and has con­firmed strike action at the Ports of Auck­land for Tues­day 2 Decem­ber and Wed­nes­day 3 Decem­ber 2008.

Four­teen days notice of the strike action was giv­en to the Ports of Auck­land man­age­ment early this after­noon by Mari­time Uni­on Loc­al 13, which rep­res­ents water­front and oth­er work­ers at the Port.

Mari­time Uni­on Loc­al 13 Pres­id­ent Denis Carl­isle says around 300 work­ers in the con­tain­er ter­min­al steve­doring, road, rail, shuttle and engin­eer­ing ser­vices areas will with­draw labour for a 24 hour peri­od start­ing at 10.59pm on Tues­day 2 Decem­ber.

Mr Carl­isle says the indus­tri­al action has come about because work­ers want to hold a major stop­work meet­ing to dis­cuss employ­ment issues.

“Work­ers want to meet togeth­er, and are pre­pared to do this at a time that is con­veni­ent for ship­ping sched­ules. Man­age­ment have refused our pro­pos­al and obvi­ously see hard­line pos­tur­ing as more import­ant than ensur­ing sta­bil­ity and ser­vice for their cus­tom­ers.”

Mr Carl­isle says that the Uni­on mem­ber­ship requires an eight-hour stop­work meet­ing to work through out­stand­ing issues with their employ­ment agree­ment.

He says short meet­ings pro­posed by the Com­pany will not resolve any­thing and will simply delay deal­ing with the issues.

“We’d like to get some pro­gress, get mat­ters dis­cussed thor­oughly, take dir­ec­tion from our mem­bers and then get on with things.”

Mr Carl­isle says man­age­ment has taken an aggress­ive approach to the issue by attack­ing the Uni­on in pub­lic, which has back­fired and angered work­ers.

It had also cre­ated poor pub­li­city for the Ports of Auck­land.

“This tac­tic has had a major neg­at­ive impact on nego­ti­ations between the parties. It appears man­age­ment are assur­ing their cus­tom­ers they are try­ing to reach a solu­tion on one hand, while push­ing up ten­sions with inflam­mat­ory state­ments on the oth­er hand, which does not indic­ate a con­struct­ive atti­tude.”

Mr Carl­isle says the Uni­on will con­tin­ue to be open to a nego­ti­ated solu­tion to the prob­lem, but would take a stand on prin­ciple if uni­on mem­bers were unhappy with the approach of man­age­ment.