Maritime Union highlights negative effects of Fonterra port pull out

The Mar­itime Union says region­al ports have been hit hard because of a deci­sion by Fonter­ra to rail goods to dis­tant ports.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the moves have already led to notices of major redun­dan­cies in the port of Timaru, greater casu­al­iza­tion of the work­force, and was threat­en­ing the via­bil­i­ty of some ports.

“This issue can­not be dealt with by ports con­tin­u­ing to com­pete each oth­er into the ground. It must be addressed by nation­al co-ordi­na­tion of our trans­port sys­tem, not the waste­ful, inse­cure and chaot­ic mess we have at the moment.”

He says that Fonter­ra is run­ning for cov­er on the issue and their expla­na­tions have not sat­is­fied peo­ple in the region­al ports affect­ed by their recent deci­sions.

Mr Han­son says there are indus­try con­cerns that Fonter­ra may be get­ting extreme­ly low rates to trans­port goods by rail.

He says while such a sit­u­a­tion might suit Fonter­ra, region­al ports and coastal ship­ping were being dis­ad­van­taged.

As rail was pub­licly owned, this could mean peo­ple and busi­ness­es in those com­mu­ni­ties would be effec­tive­ly pay­ing for work to be tak­en away from them.

Mr Han­son says it’s not a case of rail ver­sus sea.

“The Mar­itime Union is a big sup­port­er of rail being in pub­lic own­er­ship, and pub­lic invest­ment in rail, but it has to be part of an inte­grat­ed trans­port sys­tem, not just anoth­er way for the big oper­a­tors to play off ports and trans­port modes against each oth­er.”

He says the Mar­itime Union sup­ports the use of coastal ship­ping and rail work­ing togeth­er, rather than the Gov­ern­men­t’s empha­sis on “unsus­tain­able, pol­lut­ing and inef­fi­cient” heavy truck­ing.