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.