Archives

Fast food jobs shows National Government’s contempt for young workers

The Mar­itime Union says the Nation­al Gov­ern­men­t’s plan to act as a com­pul­so­ry recruit­ment agency for McDon­alds fast food chain is a trav­es­ty.

Social Devel­op­ment Min­is­ter Paula Ben­nett has described an agree­ment between WINZ and McDon­alds that will pro­vide up to 7000 unem­ployed work­ers for the fast-food chain’s growth plans over the next five years.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the scheme has two ben­e­fi­cia­ries – a Gov­ern­ment with a fail­ing jobs pol­i­cy, and a glob­al cor­po­ra­tion that will suck prof­its out of New Zealand.

Fisheries Minister throwing New Zealand jobs to the sharks

The Mar­itime Union has slammed com­ments by Fish­eries Min­is­ter Phil Heat­ley about employ­ment in New Zealand’s fish­ing indus­try, and say they make a bad joke out of the Gov­ern­men­t’s com­mit­ment to pro­tect jobs.
Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says Mr Heat­ley has pub­licly admit­ted that New Zealand jobs are not a pri­or­i­ty in the New Zealand fish­ing indus­try.

New Zealand should follow Aussie lead on job protection

The Mar­itime Union says the New South Wales State Gov­ern­ment could teach John Key one or two things about pro­tect­ing jobs.

Near­ly $4 bil­lion worth of NSW gov­ern­ment goods and ser­vices includ­ing uni­forms, cars and even trains, will have to be sourced from Aus­tralian com­pa­nies in order to boost local pro­duc­tion and jobs, in an upcom­ing bud­get annouce­ment that has been wel­comed by Aus­tralian unions.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says this idea should be adopt­ed imme­di­ate­ly in New Zealand.

Employers must pay for swine flu quarantines

The Mar­itime Union will be ask­ing employ­ers to pay work­ers sent home due to swine flu quar­an­tines.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says mar­itime work­ers are in the front line and are an at risk group for expo­sure to infec­tious dis­eases com­ing into the coun­try.

Budget takes New Zealand transport down the wrong road

The Mar­itime Union says the bud­get announced today is a step back­ward for trans­port infra­struc­ture.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the lack of sup­port for the mar­itime indus­try is a glar­ing omis­sion.

Mr Han­son says the aban­don­ment of the SeaChange strat­e­gy to build up New Zealand ship­ping in favour of build­ing more roads is a bad mis­take.

“The Gov­ern­ment has poured mon­ey into road­ing as the world hits peak oil and cli­mate change. They are mov­ing in exact­ly the wrong direc­tion. Ship­ping is the trans­port mode of the future that is low-impact, envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble and cost effec­tive in the long term, but has been side­lined.”

Free trade dairy debacle with USA was inevitable

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand says the col­lapse of free trade in dairy prod­ucts going into the Unit­ed States was pre­dictable and inevitable.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says New Zealand has been naive in allow­ing free trade ide­ol­o­gy to replace com­mon sense and had been “led by the nose” by a self-inter­est­ed sec­tor of busi­ness in New Zealand who put their own inter­ests first.

He says that nations such as the Unit­ed States would sup­port free trade as long as it served their inter­ests, then would aban­don it when it no longer suit­ed them, which is what had now hap­pened.

Removal of Ports of Auckland chairman is a positive move

The Mar­itime Union says the removal of Ports of Auck­land chair­man Gary Judd last week is for the best.

Mar­itime Union Local 13 Pres­i­dent Denis Carlisle says the removal of Ports of Auck­land chair­man Gary Judd by Auck­land Region­al Hold­ings could lead to a more pos­i­tive atmos­phere.

He says the Union has been con­cerned about the approach of Mr Judd and his lev­el of com­mit­ment to the Ports of Auck­land as a pub­lic asset owned by the peo­ple of Auck­land.

Work stoppage announced for Ports of Auckland

Work­ers at the Ports of Auck­land have issued a strike notice in order to hold a stop work meet­ing between 12 noon and 4.30pm on Fri­day 5 June 2009 to dis­cuss employ­ment issues.

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand announced the stop­page after medi­a­tion with port com­pa­ny man­age­ment about new work con­di­tions for union mem­bers to avoid redun­dan­cies took place on Thurs­day 21 May.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Local 13 Pres­i­dent Denis Carlisle says the stop­work meet­ing will bring togeth­er work­ers at the Port to dis­cuss ongo­ing nego­ti­a­tions around their expired col­lec­tive employ­ment agree­ment, which had been impact­ed by a man­age­ment plan to slash jobs.

Campaign website launched for Ports of Auckland workers

Check out the new cam­paign web­site for all Ports of Auck­land work­ers and sup­port­ers.

Maritime Union prepares to defend Auckland jobs

The Mar­itime Union says a plan to make Ports of Auck­land work­ers redun­dant will be met with a strong response.

A nation­al exec­u­tive meet­ing of the Mar­itime Union held in Welling­ton today endorsed nation­al action in sup­port of the work­ers whose jobs are threat­ened at Ports of Auck­land.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Auck­land work­ers addressed the nation­al meet­ing which unan­i­mous­ly endorsed indus­tri­al and legal strate­gies to fight job loss­es.