Ports of Auckland CEO comments “mistaken and confused”

The Mar­itime Union says com­ments by Ports of Auck­land CEO Tony Gib­son about Maer­sk ship­ping pulling their Auck­land ser­vice are mis­tak­en and con­fused.

Mar­itime Union Nation­al Pres­i­dent Gar­ry Parsloe says the asser­tion that the move by Maer­sk was sim­ply a result of indus­tri­al action was clear­ly inac­cu­rate.

He says that ship­ping com­pa­nies pulled out of New Zealand ports and swapped into oth­ers on a reg­u­lar basis, for all sorts of rea­sons.

“Our advice to Mr Gib­son is to stop play­ing to the gallery and start talk­ing to his work­force.”

Mr Parsloe says man­age­ment pulled out of medi­a­tion today at the last moment.

“We were all set to go along and get the talks under­way and then at the last minute the com­pa­ny decide they are not com­ing.”

He says it is strange behav­iour for POAL man­age­ment to say how ter­ri­ble the sit­u­a­tion is for their cus­tomers, and then lock out their work­force and fail to show up at nego­ti­a­tions.

“Since the port com­pa­ny have locked its employ­ees out for four days, per­haps the ques­tion should be asked what effect has this deci­sion by man­age­ment had on ship­ping and cus­tomers?”

“We real­ly need to be ask­ing what is the agen­da here. Is this a com­pa­ny that wants a res­o­lu­tion? Or is this an agen­da to attack work­ers?”

Mr Parsloe says media com­ments from big busi­ness exec­u­tives and Port of Tau­ran­ga CEO Mark Cairns were trans­par­ent and deriso­ry.

“The real­i­ty is these gen­tle­men would pre­fer it if work­ers were paid noth­ing. That would ensure more prof­its for them, which is all they care about and is all they have ever cared about.”

The issue was that work­ers at Ports of Auck­land were not going to accept con­tract­ing out or the under­min­ing of their col­lec­tive ben­e­fits they had nego­ti­at­ed.

“The CEO keeps going on about side issues in an attempt to deflect atten­tion away from this.”

“We are not going to see the years of work we have put into build­ing a decent super­an­nu­a­tion scheme and health scheme for work­ing peo­ple be under­mined.”

Cash­ing up those ben­e­fits for a tiny minor­i­ty of work­ers on indi­vid­ual agree­ments is sim­ply pro­mot­ing free­load­ing and in the long term is clear­ly aimed at knock­ing out con­di­tions first, then attack­ing wages lat­er, says Mr Parsloe.

“Mr Gib­son is talk­ing like this is the first time a multi­na­tion­al ship­ping com­pa­ny has pulled out of a New Zealand port and it is all due to work­ers.”

But this claim was under­mined by the fact that Maer­sk had pub­licly stat­ed there were many rea­sons for the deci­sion, and the glob­al ship­ping multi­na­tion­al had been in dis­cus­sions with the oth­er port for some time.

“The inter­est­ing thing is every­one just goes along with all the eco­nom­ic dam­age that does, which will be a lot larg­er than the stop­page at Auck­land. So let’s have a con­sis­tent approach to dis­cussing eco­nom­ic prob­lems, because if we want to start down that track, why don’t we put the acid on the ship­ping com­pa­nies.”

Mr Parsloe says it is time ques­tions were asked when Port Com­pa­ny CEOs, road trans­port exec­u­tives and big busi­ness advo­cates were all singing the same song.