Maritime Union joins rallies and digs deep in Telecom lines engineers dispute

The Mar­itime Union has upped its indus­tri­al and finan­cial sup­port of Tele­com lines engi­neers in their employ­ment dis­pute.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says a nation­al meet­ing of Union rep­re­sen­ta­tives from ports and ships this morn­ing vot­ed an ini­tial $10,000 to sup­port Tele­com lines engi­neers in their strug­gle for secure jobs.

Mar­itime Union mem­bers from New Zealand ships and the water­front joined ral­lies in Auck­land and Welling­ton this morn­ing along­side the lines engi­neers and oth­er sup­port­ers.

The lines engi­neers are mem­bers of the EPMU.

Hun­dreds of jobs of Tele­com lines engi­neers are threat­ened by attempts by Tele­com con­trac­tor Vision­stream to force work­ers to become “depen­dent con­trac­tors”.

Mr Han­son says this dis­pute affects all New Zealand work­ers and mar­itime work­ers were very aware of the seri­ous nature of this attack by employ­ers.

He says the Mar­itime Union is 100% behind the lines engi­neers.

“If Tele­com and Vision­stream are allowed to get away with this, it will be open sea­son on all work­ers. Their actions must be exposed and stopped. Work­ers need secure jobs.”

Mr Han­son says the Mar­itime Union is con­tact­ing inter­na­tion­al mar­itime unions and work­ing with affil­i­ates of the New Zealand Coun­cil of Trade Unions and the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion to build sup­port.

He says Tele­com imports through ports will come under close scruti­ny if they are relat­ed to the cur­rent dis­pute and broad­band roll­out.

The Mar­itime Union and the EPMU are part of the “Oil and Gas Alliance” which unites work­ers in the off shore oil and gas indus­try.

The Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) is made up of 681 unions rep­re­sent­ing 4,500,000 trans­port work­ers in 148 coun­tries.