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Heavy trucking plan a “roadhog’s charter”

The Mar­itime Union is back­ing Green Par­ty calls for the Gov­ern­ment to recon­sid­er its push to put over­sized trucks on New Zealand roads.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the Gov­ern­ment is obvi­ous­ly not con­cerned at the extra deaths and injuries that will occur as a result on New Zealand roads.

Timaru port meeting resounding success

Over 100 local peo­ple attend­ed a Timaru pub­lic meet­ing on the future of the port of Timaru on Thurs­day 17 Sep­tem­ber.

The meet­ing was called by the Mar­itime Union of New Zealand fol­low­ing a deci­sion last month by Fonter­ra to stop exports from the port of Timaru, which has result­ed in a mas­sive loss of work for the port.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the meet­ing was a suc­cess.

Timaru meeting to defend port gathers steam

Today’s Timaru Her­ald fea­tures the Timaru pub­lic meet­ing this Thurs­day 17 Sep­tem­ber as their lead sto­ry.

Read the full sto­ry here.

Public Meeting for Port of Timaru – Thursday 17 September 2009

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand is host­ing a pub­lic meet­ing on the future of the Port of Timaru. The meet­ing will be held at “Rob­bies” (Hibern­ian Hotel), Lat­ter Street, Timaru on Thurs­day 17 Sep­tem­ber start­ing at 7.30pm sharp.

All con­cerned local peo­ple are invit­ed to the meet­ing, includ­ing port work­ers, unions, busi­ness, indus­try, farm­ers, and all those con­cerned with the future of the port.

For more infor­ma­tion see the Port of Timaru cam­paign web­site.

Where does Minister of Transport Steven Joyce stand in regional ports furore?

The Mar­itime Union is ask­ing where the Gov­ern­ment and the Min­is­ter of Trans­port stands on the future of region­al ports after Fonter­ra announced it was with­draw­ing from some region­al ports in favour of trans­port­ing goods by long dis­tance rail last month.

Jobs are under threat, casu­al­iza­tion is hit­ting work­ers hard, and the via­bil­i­ty of region­al ports is under a cloud after the deci­sion, which has cre­at­ed intense debate in the regions and the trans­port indus­try.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the union’s nation­al exec­u­tive met with a Fonter­ra rep­re­sen­ta­tive ear­li­er this week.

Answers needed on KiwiRail – Fonterra deal

Car­toon cour­tesy of the Ship­ping Gazette

The Mar­itime Union has stepped up its demand for answers as fall­out con­tin­ues from Fonter­ra’s dump­ing of region­al ports in favour of long dis­tance rail – and the influ­ence that state sub­si­dies to KiwiRail may have had on any deal.

KiwiRail has wad­ed into the grow­ing debate over the fate of region­al ports, as the impli­ca­tions of Fonter­ra’s with­draw­al from ports in New Ply­mouth and Timaru becomes appar­ent.

Government can put New Zealanders in containers, but it can’t give them jobs shipping them

The Mar­itime Union has a mes­sage for the Gov­ern­ment: instead of jail­ing New Zealan­ders in con­tain­ers, it would be bet­ter to have them work­ing on the con­tain­ers by rebuild­ing coastal ship­ping.

Cor­rec­tions Min­is­ter Judith Collins announced today a “con­tain­er unit” will be set up at Rimu­ta­ka Prison to house surg­ing num­bers of pris­on­ers, the lat­est embar­rass­ing step in New Zealand’s fail­ure to con­front the real issues behind crime.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says New Zealand work­ers have been forced out of mar­itime employ­ment in their own coun­try by allow­ing over­seas labour to be exploit­ed on the New Zealand coastal waters.

He says that due to the “open coast” pol­i­cy intro­duced by Nation­al in the 1990s New Zealand had seen its ship­ping indus­try tak­en apart, while many oth­er coun­tries reserved their domes­tic mer­chant ship­ping and fish­eries for local indus­try.

Fonterra milking New Zealand taxpayers

The Mar­itime Union has hit back at “social­ly irre­spon­si­ble” Fonter­ra pulling out of region­al ports and says the dairy giant’s prof­its are being sub­si­dized by the tax­pay­er.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says Fonter­ra has come out with “weak excus­es” for its deci­sion to pull out of some region­al ports in favour of trans­port­ing prod­ucts by long dis­tance rail.

Mr Han­son says the future of the New Zealand trans­port indus­try seems to be in the hands of one man, Fonter­ra Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Sup­ply Chain Strat­e­gy Nigel Jones.

“Fonter­ra holds the fate of whole region­al economies in their hands because of their size and influ­ence, but seem to have no account­abil­i­ty to any­one but them­selves.”

Maritime Union joins rallies and digs deep in Telecom lines engineers dispute

The Mar­itime Union has upped its indus­tri­al and finan­cial sup­port of Tele­com lines engi­neers in their employ­ment dis­pute.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says a nation­al meet­ing of Union rep­re­sen­ta­tives from ports and ships this morn­ing vot­ed an ini­tial $10,000 to sup­port Tele­com lines engi­neers in their strug­gle for secure jobs.

Mar­itime Union mem­bers from New Zealand ships and the water­front joined ral­lies in Auck­land and Welling­ton this morn­ing along­side the lines engi­neers and oth­er sup­port­ers.

Maritime Union calling for international support for Telecom engineers

The Mar­itime Union has added its weight to the strug­gle of Tele­com lines engi­neers fight­ing to pro­tect their jobs.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says mar­itime work­ers will be sup­port­ing the Tele­com lines engi­neers, who are mem­bers of the EPMU, in their bat­tle against con­tract­ing out.

He says a spe­cial nation­al exec­u­tive meet­ing of the Mar­itime Union has been called for Mon­day, which will be fol­lowed by com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion based in Lon­don and its New Zealand union affil­i­ates, as well as Aus­tralian mar­itime unions.