Maritime Union of New Zealand affiliates to International Dockerworkers Council (IDC)

New Zealand’s water­front work­ers have affil­i­at­ed to a glob­al orga­ni­za­tion of dock­work­ers.

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand vot­ed at its July 2022 Nation­al Coun­cil meet­ing to affil­i­ate to the Inter­na­tion­al Dock­work­ers Coun­cil.

That meet­ing was addressed by IDC Asia–Oceania rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Keat­ing, who is the Sec­re­tary of the Syd­ney Branch of the Mar­itime Union of Aus­tralia.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the affil­i­a­tion is a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion for the Union.

“Dock­ers and water­front work­ers have very close inter­na­tion­al bonds as a result of us all being part of the first glob­al­ized indus­try, mar­itime trans­port.”

He says com­mon issues faced by dock­work­ers through­out the world includ­ed automa­tion, tech­no­log­i­cal changes, hos­tile anti-work­er laws, pri­va­ti­za­tion, and GNTs (glob­al net­work ter­mi­nal oper­a­tors.)

Mr Har­ri­son says build­ing inter­na­tion­al uni­ty amongst work­ers was a pri­or­i­ty for the IDC.

He says the IDC was formed in 2000 fol­low­ing the strug­gle of the Liv­er­pool Dock­ers in the 1990s. In 2022, the IDC has over 140,000 dock­work­ers and port work­ers in its ranks glob­al­ly.

Mr Har­ri­son says the MUNZ affil­i­a­tion to the IDC is com­ple­men­tary to the affil­i­a­tion of the Mar­itime Union to the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF.)

Back­ground

The IDC (Inter­na­tion­al Dock­work­ers Coun­cil) is an asso­ci­a­tion formed by orga­ni­za­tions of dock­work­ers from all over the world. It is defined by its basic prin­ci­ples as being a unit­ed, inde­pen­dent, demo­c­ra­t­ic, assem­bly-based work­ing-class orga­ni­za­tion.

The IDC objec­tives are to sup­port mem­ber unions in win­ning and main­tain­ing appro­pri­ate labor stan­dards and work­ing con­di­tions in the sec­tor for all port work­ers world­wide, to cre­ate a net­work of inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty in defense of the pro­fes­sion and to active­ly par­tic­i­pate as an inter­na­tion­al move­ment of work­ers stand­ing up to the eco­nom­ic glob­al­iza­tion of busi­ness­es in the sec­tor.

Glob­al­ly, the IDC is the only inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion that coor­di­nates and direct­ly brings togeth­er dock­work­ers’ unions.