Port Unions Condemn Plan to Slash Jobs at Port Otago

The two main water­front uni­ons have con­demned a pro­pos­al to slash 12 jobs at Port Otago.

Both the Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and (MUNZ) and the Rail and Mari­time Trans­port Uni­on (RMTU) were united in their cri­ti­cism of the plan.

‘At a time when Port Otago has just delivered a record $12.5 mil­lion dividend to its own­er Otago Region­al Coun­cil, it beg­gars belief that the Port wants to slash jobs,’ said RMTU Nation­al Sec­ret­ary Wayne But­son.

‘Man­age­ment say they are expect­ing a decline in con­tain­er num­bers as the Port is no longer the trans-ship­ment hub for ship­ping  Maersk, but they remain upbeat about the future, say­ing they are con­fid­ent about the suc­cess of the Port,’ said Mr But­son.

‘That a pub­licly owned com­pany can con­sider throw­ing people out of work in these cir­cum­stances is com­pletely unac­cept­able, those work­ers cre­ated the wealth that was paid out to Otago Region­al Coun­cil as a dividend and this is the thanks they get,’ he said.

Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and Gen­er­al Sec­ret­ary Joe Fleet­wood said the Port Otago plan is flawed as with grow­ing trade was occur­ring in some areas of the busi­ness.

‘A few months down the track, the com­pany may have to go to all the trouble of employ­ing new skilled staff after let­ting their cur­rent staff go.’

Mr Fleet­wood said the port com­pany has to accept that peaks and troughs in ship­ping was a part of the industry, and to stop using work­ers as pawns in a situ­ation where the work­force was pro­duct­ive and the com­pany was per­form­ing well.

Mr But­son said it had been a bad enough year for Duned­in with 44 jobs being cut at Hill­side in July, now more fam­il­ies faced an uncer­tain future while the Region­al Coun­cil pock­eted a record dividend.

‘The Com­bined Uni­ons will be doing everything we can to try and turn this pro­pos­al around. Unem­ploy­ment is rising nation­ally and this region is suf­fer­ing dis­pro­por­tion­ally. It seems that both the Nation­al led Gov­ern­ment and the Region­al Coun­cil don’t care about work­ers, their fam­il­ies and the wider com­munity when it comes to jobs,’ he said.

‘We have a couple of weeks to mobil­ise to fight these cuts before the decision is final. We’ll be hold­ing a joint meet­ing of our mem­bers next week to decide on how we’ll do that,’ he said.