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Maritime Union vows national action to save Napier jobs

The Maritime Union is gearing up for national and international action to protect secure local jobs at the Port of Napier. Members of the Maritime Union employed at Hawkes Bay Stevedoring Services have been threatened with job losses after a container stevedoring contract was awarded to Mount Maunganui based stevedore ISO. Maritime Union General Secretary Trevor Hanson says the decision by the port company has already generated a major backlash, with a national meeting of the Union today calling for solidarity action with the Napier workers.

The Mar­itime Union is gear­ing up for nation­al and inter­na­tion­al action to pro­tect secure local jobs at the Port of Napi­er.

Mem­bers of the Mar­itime Union employed at Hawkes Bay Steve­dor­ing Ser­vices have been threat­ened with job loss­es after a con­tain­er steve­dor­ing con­tract was award­ed to Mount Maun­ganui based steve­dore ISO.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the deci­sion by the port com­pa­ny has already gen­er­at­ed a major back­lash, with a nation­al meet­ing of the Union today call­ing for sol­i­dar­i­ty action with the Napi­er work­ers.

Mr Han­son says the deci­sion will affect around 25 per­ma­nent jobs and around 60 casu­al jobs in the Port of Napi­er from the start of next year.

“We are not going to allow a sit­u­a­tion where local jobs are dis­rupt­ed and destroyed.”

Mr Han­son says the port work­ers in Napi­er were gut­ted and angry by the deci­sion by the Port of Napi­er Lim­it­ed.

“Our mem­bers have worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the Port Com­pa­ny and gen­er­at­ed big prof­its for the Hawkes Bay Region­al Coun­cil and the local peo­ple.”

Mr Han­son says it appears that ISO were going to try to use Napi­er mar­itime work­ers to train their own staff in the mean­time.

“This is not going to hap­pen.”

The Mar­itime Union was talk­ing with the Coun­cil of Trade Unions and the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) about the sit­u­a­tion, and would be approach­ing over­seas unions includ­ing the Mar­itime Union of Aus­tralia and the ILWU on the USA west coast for assis­tance.

The Mar­itime Union was already in touch with ship­ping com­pa­nies to reg­is­ter their con­cerns and all branch­es of the Union had offered sup­port to the Napi­er work­ers.

Mr Han­son says the Union’s case had already received some high lev­el sup­port.

Napi­er MP Rus­sell Fair­broth­er had said today that the Ports of Napi­er, owned by Hawkes Bay Region­al Coun­cil, had a respon­si­bil­i­ty to being a good Hawkes’ Bay cit­i­zen and he had asked local peo­ple to con­tact the Port Com­pa­ny and Region­al Coun­cil with their con­cerns.

The Union agreed with Mr Fair­broth­er’s com­ment that the port was there to serve us, not to exploit us.

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