Port contracting out proposal unlawful — union

The Mar­itime Union says that the Ports of Auck­land deci­sion to dis­miss its work­force is unlaw­ful, and work­ers will chal­lenge it.

The Mar­itime Union has asked the Employ­ment Court for a rul­ing on whether Port man­age­ment dis­miss­ing its work­force, while in nego­ti­a­tions over an employ­ment agree­ment for those jobs, is against the law, MUNZ Nation­al Pres­i­dent Gar­ry Parsloe said.

The union has today also released its full response to the com­pa­ny pro­pos­al.

“Ports of Auck­land gave lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion to our response to them on their con­tract­ing out pro­pos­al,” said Gar­ry Parsloe.

“We set out in detail all the prob­lems with their pro­pos­al, but they have clear­ly just been going through the motions, and push­ing ahead with their plan to take away job secu­ri­ty for work­ers.”

The union response to the pro­posed redun­dan­cies was yes­ter­day sent to all Auck­land Coun­cil­lors, and they need­ed to put a stop to the Port management’s actions, Gar­ry Parsloe said.

“The Coun­cil needs to inter­vene to ensure that this flawed con­tract­ing mod­el is not imple­ment­ed in their name as the means to deliv­er an unre­al­is­tic 12% return.”

Gar­ry Parsloe said Ports work­ers were invit­ing the pub­lic of Auck­land to join them at a ral­ly for secure jobs and a sus­tain­able port, at Brit­o­mart this Sat­ur­day at 4pm.

In their response to the pro­posed dis­missal, work­ers argued that:

• The dis­missal pro­pos­al is unlaw­ful;
• The dis­missal pro­pos­al is under­min­ing of the bar­gain­ing for a Col­lec­tive Agree­ment, and amounts to an unlaw­ful lock­out;
• The deci­sion to split the deci­sion to con­tract out, from issues sur­round­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of con­tract­ing out is arti­fi­cial, and has pre­clud­ed a prop­er con­sul­ta­tion;
• The pro­pos­al is imprac­ti­cal;
• The pro­pos­al relies on sta­tis­ti­cal data to estab­lish a cri­sis in com­par­i­son to the Port of Tau­ran­ga.  No such cri­sis in fact exists;
• The focus on the return on cap­i­tal is not good rea­son for the dis­missal pro­pos­al.