Our Islands Need Ships, Our Workers Need Jobs

New Zealand needs a bal­anced, effi­cient and afford­able trans­port sys­tem.

It must be safe, acces­si­ble, envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able and flex­i­ble enough to meet the chal­lenges of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Our exist­ing inter­modal sys­tem is sys­tem­i­cal­ly unbal­anced.

A long-term overem­pha­sis on the road net­work and truck­ing has cre­at­ed an uneven play­ing field for coastal ship­ping and rail.

With freight tasks expect­ed to dou­ble in the next thir­ty years, we will face increas­ing pres­sure on truck dri­vers, road upkeep costs for tax and rate pay­ers, and the entire trans­port infra­struc­ture.

Work­ers and employ­ers oper­at­ing between two quake-prone islands must be able to trust in a reli­able set of trans­port options.

Fac­tor­ing in New Zealand’s com­mit­ment to envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and CO2 reduc­tion, we can­not con­tin­ue to expand pri­vate road trans­port to the detri­ment of oth­er, more car­bon effi­cient meth­ods.

Coastal Ship­ping

There is no trans­port method more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly or cost effec­tive than coastal ship­ping.

The Labour Par­ty in gov­ern­ment must com­mit to mak­ing coastal ship­ping an inte­gral part of our nation­al trans­port strat­e­gy.

We also need greater invest­ment in mod­ern rail trans­port, and seri­ous atten­tion paid to the work­ing hours and job con­di­tions of truck dri­vers.

It is high time pri­or­i­ty was giv­en to the strug­gling New Zealand ship­ping indus­try. It needs an even play­ing field.

New Zealand’s tax, envi­ron­ment and labour laws are not con­sis­tent­ly applied to the glob­al ship­ping com­pa­nies that dom­i­nate our coasts, and work that legit­i­mate­ly belongs to Kiwi sea­far­ers is instead car­ried out by for­eign crews pass­ing through, often on low wages and appalling con­di­tions.

Either our mar­itime laws must apply to all ves­sels trad­ing on our coast or a strat­e­gy must be in place to help domes­tic ship­ping com­pa­nies that employ NZ sea­far­ers of all rank­ings com­pete on an even keel.

KiwiPort

The Mar­itime Union has pro­posed the con­cept of a “Kiwiport”, with a view that ports through­out New Zealand should come under a coor­di­nat­ing struc­ture.

As vital parts of our trans­port infra­struc­ture, the future of these pub­licly owned facil­i­ties is too impor­tant to leave to chance.

The 2018 Labour-led gov­ern­ment must do every­thing in its pow­er to defend pub­lic own­er­ship of ports, and pro­mote ratio­nal, co-oper­a­tive and future-focused rela­tion­ships between them.

Despite the efforts of the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment to lock New Zealand fur­ther into a fos­sil fuel depen­dent econ­o­my at a time of peak oil and cli­mate cri­sis, coastal ship­ping offers a ready-made solu­tion.

The regen­er­a­tion of a reg­u­lat­ed domes­tic ship­ping indus­try would lead to the sta­bil­i­ty of region­al ports, pro­vid­ing an alter­na­tive to the large ves­sel syn­drome pro­mot­ed by glob­al ship­ping oper­a­tors whose arbi­trary changes to call­ing sched­ules have ports on the hop.

Ports could be put under local own­er­ship and con­trol, but rather than being left to parochial com­pe­ti­tion, they would have to oper­ate in an inte­grat­ed frame­work.

A nation­al ports plan and Gov­ern­ment share­hold­ing could car­ry out port ratio­nal­i­sa­tion based on the pub­lic inter­est.

The sav­ings on waste­ful com­pe­ti­tion between ports would be enor­mous, and the tran­si­tion to hub and feed­er ports could be man­aged to ensure region­al ports were not dis­ad­van­taged.

Ports would be oper­at­ed on a basis of facil­i­tat­ing trade.

Methyl Bro­mide

There are seri­ous safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns around the use of methyl bro­mide as a fumi­gant in New Zealand ports.

The com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al use of high­ly tox­ic sub­stances must only take place under strict­ly reg­u­lat­ed con­di­tions, using the safest pos­si­ble meth­ods.

Methyl bro­mide expo­sure can cause seri­ous long-term health prob­lems.

It has been linked to brain can­cer and debil­i­tat­ing neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders.

The most com­mon­ly used process for post-fumi­ga­tion gas dis­pos­al is cur­rent­ly via release into the atmos­phere, putting port work­ers and near­by com­mu­ni­ties at risk of expo­sure to this taste­less, odor­less poi­son, and caus­ing seri­ous ozone deple­tion.

Port com­pa­nies and con­trac­tors must be required to employ meth­ods of gas dis­pos­al result­ing in full recap­ture, in des­ig­nat­ed areas designed for the pur­pose.

Work­safe and the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency must inves­ti­gate to the full extent of their pow­ers any exist­ing breach­es of safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions relat­ing to methyl bro­mide, with finan­cial penal­ties where applic­a­ble.

Exist­ing recap­ture tar­gets must be met with­in estab­lished dead­lines, and those respon­si­ble must be clear­ly des­ig­nat­ed and held account­able.

Indus­try Train­ing Urgent­ly Need­ed

Young Kiwis have the right to a career path­way and secure jobs in their own coun­try.

It is no secret the mar­itime indus­try has an aging work­force, brought on large­ly by the lack of indus­try and gov­ern­ment sup­port­ed train­ing.

It is eas­i­er for the com­pa­ny to employ a non-New Zealand nation­al than it is to train work­ers here.

As trade union­ists we are inter­na­tion­al­ists, and we sup­port mar­itime work­ers from all over the world.

It is, how­ev­er, symp­to­matic of a failed sys­tem when you see com­pa­nies fail­ing to invest to required lev­els in domes­tic train­ing pro­grams for young work­ers, and instead employ­ing for­eign sea­far­ers on low wages.

New Zealand should imple­ment a pro­gres­sive quo­ta sys­tem.

When you have unem­ployed New Zealand sea­far­ers queu­ing up for jobs, any vacan­cies must be offered to them first, with wages and con­di­tions that entice peo­ple to go to sea.

With­out indus­try reforms at a top gov­ern­ment lev­el which pro­vide a career path for our young and an even keel for NZ ship­ping, we will con­tin­ue to see the demise of New Zealand ship own­ers and crews to preda­to­ry multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies.

The cur­rent Nation­al gov­ern­ment is hell bent on let­ting it hap­pen.

We need Labour to turn the ship around, before it’s too late.