New cross-Tasman maritime worker federation to bolster MUA and MUNZ power in Kiwi and Australian ports

At the Mar­itime Union of Australia’s Nation­al Con­fer­ence in Ade­laide the MUA and the Mar­itime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) announced a new fed­er­a­tion bring­ing togeth­er the two unions in a for­mal arrange­ment to build work­ers’ pow­er at ports through­out Aus­tralia and New Zealand.

Speak­ing at the announce­ment, Nation­al Sec­re­tary of the MUA Pad­dy Crum­lin explained that a for­mal arrange­ment was the next log­i­cal step for the two unions after many decades of close­ly work­ing togeth­er on work­place, safe­ty, geopo­lit­i­cal and indus­tri­al chal­lenges fac­ing mar­itime work­ers in both coun­tries.

“The fra­ter­nal bonds that link our two unions are some of the clos­est, old­est and most durable in the trade union move­ment, and giv­en we are work­ing in an increas­ing­ly glob­alised work­place and stand­ing up against some of the same boss­es, it makes per­fect sense to expand and bol­ster the strength of our Unions through a for­malised fed­er­a­tion,” Crum­lin said.

The Mar­itime Union of Aus­tralia, formed in 1993, is an amal­ga­ma­tion of the old Water­side Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion and the Seamen’s Union of Aus­tralia. The MUA, through its pre­de­ces­sor Unions has been an immov­able force on the Aus­tralian water­front and around our coast­line for 151 years. Like­wise, in 2002, MUNZ was formed through the amal­ga­ma­tion of two unions, cov­er­ing wharfies and sea­far­ers, that trace their his­to­ries in New Zealand to the 19th cen­tu­ry.

“The his­to­ry of mar­itime indus­tries was one of casu­al labour, injury and death on the job, and ruth­less employ­ers who wouldn’t cede an inch to their work­ers,” said Craig Har­ri­son, the MUNZ Nation­al Sec­re­tary.

“Our mem­bers had to fight for and defend their right to secure, per­ma­nent jobs, a decent wage and safe con­di­tions of work. We have stood togeth­er to improve the lot of work­ing peo­ple and their com­mu­ni­ties since those ear­ly days and we now look towards an even stronger pres­ence on the water­front and on our ships across the Asia Pacif­ic through this fed­er­a­tion with the MUA,” Har­ri­son said.

The expan­sion of glob­al net­work ter­mi­nal oper­a­tors and the vora­cious appetite of big employ­ers like Qube for swal­low­ing up small­er steve­dor­ing oper­a­tors across New Zealand has made the fed­er­a­tion an obvi­ous strate­gic step for the two unions to take togeth­er. The Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Government’s strate­gic ship­ping fleet com­mit­ment will also deliv­er sig­nif­i­cant trans-Tas­man capac­i­ty and new train­ing and employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in both Aus­tralian and New Zealand for mar­itime work­ers.

“We saw dur­ing COVID, where ship­ping and ter­mi­nal oper­a­tors manip­u­lat­ed vital sup­ply chains to extract max­i­mum prof­it from vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries like Aus­tralia and New Zealand that are entire­ly depen­dent on glob­al ship­ping,” said Mr Crum­lin. “Now the same car­tel forces are organ­is­ing against Aus­tralian and Kiwi com­mu­ni­ties to use the sheer brute force of cap­i­tal to take con­trol of our docks. They will jack up land­side prices, con­trol sched­ules and freight lanes, and dri­ve down the work­ing con­di­tions and wages of our mem­bers, so the strate­gic impor­tance of the rela­tion­ship between the two Unions can­not be over­stat­ed,” Crum­lin added.

The two Unions, togeth­er, rep­re­sent tens of thou­sands of mar­itime work­ers. The MUA, a divi­sion of the CFMEU, has branch­es in every state and the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry while MUNZ has ten branch­es across both the North and South Islands. The two unions already attend each other’s Nation­al Coun­cil meet­ings and work in the strongest uni­fied way across their shared inter­na­tion­al trade union affil­i­a­tions and by shar­ing trade union train­ing and stand­ing side by side in strug­gle and cam­paign­ing.

Togeth­er, the MUA and MUNZ, have col­lab­o­rat­ed on a num­ber of indus­tri­al and polit­i­cal cam­paigns and estab­lished strong fra­ter­nal bonds of sol­i­dar­i­ty between the two Unions. The ‘War on the Wharves’ char­i­ty box­ing tour­na­ment, held each year to raise mon­ey for char­i­ty, is a long-stand­ing expres­sion of this close and impor­tant rela­tion­ship.