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.