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Maritime Union to fight Ports of Auckland redundancies

The Mar­itime Union says it will fight a deci­sion to sack work­ers at the Ports of Auck­land.

Ports of Auck­land man­age­ment today announced they are effec­tive­ly shut­ting down the per­ma­nent work­force at the Bledis­loe Ter­mi­nal at the Ports of Auck­land with the loss of 28 jobs.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Local 13 Pres­i­dent Denis Carlisle says the Union is look­ing at all the options to save jobs.

Striking cabin crew get support: NZPA

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand today voiced sup­port for strik­ing Air New Zealand cab­in crew.

The 240 crew employed by Air NZ sub­sidiary Zeal walked off the job today for four days after months of fruit­less nego­ti­a­tions over pay par­i­ty with staff employed direct­ly by the air­line.

Full sto­ry here.

Maritime workers back locked out flight attendants

The Mar­itime Union is back­ing locked out flight atten­dants employed by Air New Zealand sub­sidiary Zeal 320.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says water­front work­ers and sea­far­ers sup­port­ed protests by locked out work­ers in Auck­land and Welling­ton today.

“The Mar­itime Union will give full and active sup­port to our fel­low trans­port work­ers and their union the EPMU in this dis­pute.”

Maritime Union responds to job slashing exercise at Ports of Auckland

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand says it does not accept the Ports of Auck­land pro­pos­al to slash 30 jobs.

Mar­itime Union Local 13 Auck­land Water­front Branch Pres­i­dent Denis Carlisle says the union met today with Ports of Auck­land man­age­ment to dis­cuss the pro­pos­al.

He says the Union is con­cerned with the lev­el of job loss­es and does not accept the rea­sons giv­en by man­age­ment.

OECD report pushes discredited anti-worker ideology

The Mar­itime Union says a just released OECD report on the New Zealand econ­o­my is a polit­i­cal­ly dri­ven doc­u­ment with a right-wing, anti-work­ing class agen­da.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says some of the “mar­ket ori­ent­ed reforms” pro­posed by the OECD report had been so dis­cred­it­ed by the recent eco­nom­ic cri­sis and past his­to­ry that it was a sur­prise any­one could sug­gest them with a straight face.

“How dare the authors of this report come out and preach poli­cies that end in casu­al­ized jobs, long hours, shift work and low wages for New Zealand work­ers?”

Selling ports idea still doesn’t float

Mar­itime Union Local 13 Pres­i­dent Denis Carlisle argues in the New Zealand Her­ald that attempts to rehash the pri­va­ti­za­tion of the Ports of Auck­land are point­less.

Nat’s transport funding plan puts New Zealand into reverse gear

The Mar­itime Union says the Gov­ern­men­t’s trans­port fund­ing plan is an envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic trav­es­ty.

The Nation­al Gov­ern­ment has changed spend­ing com­mit­ments of the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment and and released a state­ment on mon­ey it will put into devel­op­ing land trans­port (includ­ing sea trans­port) for the next ten years.

The new plan includes a three year com­mit­ment to spend­ing over sev­en bil­lion dol­lars on road relat­ed expen­di­ture – and even includes $51 mil­lion for cycling and walk­ways.

In com­par­i­son, it puts for­ward $1 mil­lion for “rail and sea freight” and $3 mil­lion for “domes­tic sea freight devel­op­ment.” (Yes — the fig­ure is mil­lion not bil­lion.)

That’s about one cent on rail and sea freight devel­op­ment for every twen­ty dol­lars on roads.

Holiday cash up plan “dishonest and ludicrous”

The Mar­itime Union has sav­aged a Gov­ern­ment plan to reduce hol­i­days for New Zealand work­ers by per­mit­ting “cash ups” of the fourth week of annu­al leave.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says that the plan will effec­tive­ly force ordi­nary work­ers to give up a weeks hol­i­day while per­mit­ting well-paid exec­u­tives and man­agers to spend more time at the beach.

Maritime Union wants answers on Indonesian shipjumpers

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand and Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) are inves­ti­gat­ing a shipjump­ing inci­dent in Dunedin where nine Indone­sian sea­far­ers left the fish­ing trawler Mar­inui on Fri­day 10 March.

ITF New Zealand co-ordi­na­tor Kathy Whe­lan says the Union has been in touch with the Min­istry of Immi­gra­tion about the case, and ITF rep­re­sen­ta­tives will try to speak to the fish­er­men at Auck­land Air­port before they are sent home tomor­row.

She says she is extreme­ly con­cerned about the increas­ing num­bers of for­eign sea­far­ers leav­ing their ves­sels in New Zealand ports, in this case claim­ing they were sub­ject­ed to 24 hour shifts with no breaks, two hour sleep breaks, and phys­i­cal abuse.

Ports of Auckland must remain in public hands

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand says that any pro­pos­al to pri­va­tize the Ports of Auck­land would cre­ate a “per­fect storm of oppo­si­tion.”

Mar­itime Union Local 13 Pres­i­dent Denis Carlisle says those push­ing the plan were peo­ple out of time.

“There is obvi­ous­ly a fac­tion out there who want to bring back port pri­va­ti­za­tion plans from the dead.”

Mr Carlisle says that the pri­va­ti­za­tion strat­e­gy with the Ports of Auck­land failed in the 1990s due to mass pub­lic oppo­si­tion and recent attempts to part-pri­va­tize the Ports of Lyt­tel­ton had also end­ed in fail­ure.