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.