Port expansion row shows management “isolated and out of touch”

The Mar­itime Union says the debate about the expan­sion of the Ports of Auck­land shows a port com­pa­ny man­age­ment who were out of touch and iso­lat­ed.

Mar­itime Union Nation­al Pres­i­dent Gar­ry Parsloe says the debate about the port expan­sion was an exam­ple of the intran­si­gence the work­ers at the Port are fac­ing.

He points out that a “take it or leave it” atti­tude of port man­age­ment had extend­ed from their own work­force in the cur­rent indus­tri­al dis­pute, and was now evi­dent in an agen­da to pri­va­tize and expand the port regard­less of pub­lic con­cerns.

Mr Parsloe says while the Mar­itime Union is 100% behind a busy work­ing port in the heart of Auck­land, it under­stands the need to work through the issues in a demo­c­ra­t­ic way to find a nego­ti­at­ed solu­tion which includes shar­ing this beau­ti­ful piece of land with the peo­ple of Auck­land.

“We have to share the water­front in Auck­land, it can be used cre­ative­ly to run the Port and so that recre­ation­al users can enjoy it water­front. The Port is sin­gle mind­ed in its plans – it is basi­cal­ly say­ing stuff the work­ers and stuff the city.”

“As we have expe­ri­enced, this man­age­ment team don’t believe in nego­ti­a­tion. They won’t nego­ti­ate with their work­force. On the port expan­sion issue, they won’t even nego­ti­ate with their own­ers, the peo­ple of Auck­land.”

Mr Parsloe says POAL man­age­ment actions threat­ened to destroy the rela­tion­ships that under­pinned the future of the port.

The oth­er irony that won’t be lost is the con­trast between the port man­age­ment claim that it will lose busi­ness with­out casu­al­is­ing the work­force and its jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for expan­sion based on mas­sive growth.

“This is a port man­age­ment and a CEO who has spent months bag­ging his own busi­ness, run­ning it down, say­ing it was doomed. But at the same time, POAL expan­sion plans show it is a port whose future is assured.”

Over the last 20 years, con­tain­er growth had aver­aged 6.74% growth, but improve­ments in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty had allowed the port to do more with less space.

Mr Parsloe says while the Mar­itime Union did not often agree with the state­ments of Heart of the City chief exec­u­tive Alex Swney, he says the Union thought that his request that there was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a review of the port’s plans by the peo­ple of Auck­land was a good one.

“We believe that the deci­sion on issues like port expan­sion, pri­va­ti­za­tion and out­sourc­ing should not be left with a self-inter­est­ed man­age­ment cabal pur­su­ing their own opaque agen­das.”