New Zealand maritime workers back Fremantle port workers

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand is back­ing Fre­man­tle port work­ers in their dis­pute with Qube Steve­dores.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the dis­pute has iden­ti­fied glob­al ship­ping con­glom­er­ate Wal­le­nius Wil­helm­sen (WWL) as one of the dri­vers behind the scenes.

The Mar­itime Union of Aus­tralia are in dis­pute with Qube Ports Pty Ltd regard­ing the nego­ti­a­tion of a new Enter­prise Agree­ment in the Port of Fre­man­tle.

Union labour has not been employed by Qube in Fre­man­tle since 30 July 2021, and scab labour has been used on five WWL ships.

Mr Har­ri­son says a sub­stan­tial finan­cial dona­tion has been sent to the Fre­man­tle port work­ers to sup­port what he says is now a seri­ous dis­pute with inter­na­tion­al reper­cus­sions.

He says Mar­itime Union mem­bers would attempt to deliv­er a let­ter of protest to the Cap­tain of the Ther­mopy­lae, a WWL ship that will be com­ing into the Ports of Auck­land on Mon­day 20 Sep­tem­ber.

Mr Har­ri­son says dur­ing lengthy nego­ti­a­tions between the MUA and the employ­er, Qube have laid respon­si­bil­i­ty for their refusal to agree to claims around work allo­ca­tion, shifts, ros­ters and planned time off on their clients includ­ing WWL.

He says the dis­pute with Qube is not about wages but is focussed firm­ly on pro­vid­ing work­ers with a safer work envi­ron­ment.

“The bar­gain­ing claims are pri­mar­i­ly about improv­ing fatigue man­age­ment prac­tices and occu­pa­tion­al health and safe­ty on the job while ensur­ing that work­ers have a prop­er work-life bal­ance.”

Mr Har­ri­son says the use of scab non-skilled labour in the dis­pute is entire­ly unac­cept­able to the Mar­itime Union of New Zealand and its branch­es in all ports of New Zealand.

“Ports of Auck­land has had sev­er­al deaths in recent years and as a result our mem­bers feel very strong­ly about the need for high qual­i­ty health and safe­ty, work­ing con­di­tions and work/life bal­ance.”

Mr Har­ri­son says the extreme­ly high prof­its being extract­ed by glob­al ship­pers were being made through the work of mar­itime work­ers, who deserved safe work­ing con­di­tions.