Pink Panther Plan won’t solve ship jumping crews

The Mar­itime Union says a plan by the Depart­ment of Labour to track down ship jump­ing crews by employ­ing a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor is ques­tion­able at the least.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says that pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tors may be in favour of the plan as it will ensure an end­less income stream for them in the future, but it would not solve ship jump­ing.

“The sim­ple rea­son that crews of for­eign ves­sels are jump­ing ship is that they are under­paid, exploit­ed and abused, and they are sourced over­seas from unrep­utable agents who extract a major part of these unfor­tu­nate indi­vid­u­als wages for them­selves.”

He says he can’t under­stand why the Depart­ment of Labour does­n’t focus on the real issue rather than com­ing up with strange ideas.

“The Gov­ern­ment must ensure that before a for­eign ves­sel fish­es on the New Zealand coast it must com­ply to a set of reg­u­la­tions, and fail­ure by any for­eign
ves­sel to meet these con­di­tions sim­ply means they don’t work on our coast.”

Mr Han­son says the release of a report ear­li­er this week into the treat­ment of over­seas crews in the New Zealand fish­ing indus­try detailed shock­ing exam­ples of work­er abuse, yet offi­cials seemed to be soft-ped­alling on the issue.

“Instead of bring­ing in snoops to harass work­ers, the Depart­ment of Labour should be doing its job by pro­tect­ing work­ers and putting inspec­tors on board fish­ing ves­sels.”

He says that the Mar­itime Union also reg­u­lar­ly deals with or sees cas­es of mis­treat­ment of crews aboard for­eign ves­sels.

Mr Han­son says ship jumpers also came off “Flag of Con­ve­nience” ships that car­ried the vast major­i­ty of car­go into, out of and domes­ti­cal­ly on the New Zealand coast.

He says the inter­na­tion­al ship­ping com­pa­nies oper­ate as price-fix­ing car­tels, caus­ing great harm to New Zealand as an export­ing nation, as well as in some cas­es under­pay­ing their crew.

“The only long term solu­tion to our ship­ping cri­sis and crew jump­ing is a much greater lev­el of reg­u­la­tion and pub­lic con­trol of our ship­ping.”