Ports of Auckland dispute about job security – not wages

Repeated claims made in the media that the Ports of Auck­land dis­pute is about wages are fac­tu­ally incor­rect.

Mari­time Uni­on Nation­al Pres­id­ent Garry Parsloe says the pub­lic have a right to know that the dis­pute is actu­ally about job secur­ity.

He says due to the mis­in­form­a­tion cam­paign, the Uni­on would put the gen­er­al points of its offer to the port com­pany into the pub­lic domain.

As part of its offer to the com­pany, the Mari­time Uni­on wanted work on con­tain­er shuttles on the water­front oper­ated by MUNZ mem­bers to remain, with any over­flow work to be nego­ti­ated.

The Mari­time Uni­on had pro­posed a real­ist­ic per­cent­age increase on wages, with the cur­rent col­lect­ive agree­ment and all terms and con­di­tions includ­ing rosters rolled over for the term of the agree­ment.

The uni­on had agreed to con­tin­ue to work with the com­pany on pro­ductiv­ity, and drug and alco­hol policy.

“In return our main request is that the jobs of our mem­bers are not con­trac­ted out as con­tinu­ally threatened by the port com­pany as part of a strategy to under­mine their employ­ees job secur­ity.”

“This dis­pute is about retain­ing job secur­ity, and ensur­ing work­ers have a fam­ily life that is not fur­ther dis­rup­ted by unso­cial shifts and job insec­ur­ity.”

Mr Parsloe says that offers made by Ports of Auck­land man­age­ment were simply cut and paste jobs with man­age­ment appear­ing to want to talk to every­one but its work­force.

“The quant­ity of the offers is not the point. The qual­ity and the genu­ine nature of the nego­ti­ations are what mat­ter. One hun­dred offers are point­less if they are one hun­dred offers of rub­bish.”

Mr Parsloe says all New Zea­l­and work­ers deserved secure jobs and a fam­ily life out­side work.

He says the Uni­on is always pre­pared to nego­ti­ate and wanted a res­ol­u­tion, but would not give away hard won job secur­ity.

Mr Parsloe says a mis­in­form­a­tion cam­paign about wages and con­di­tions at the port needed to be cor­rec­ted, and he sug­ges­ted the media examined the fig­ures being thrown about more closely.

“Mari­time Uni­on fig­ures show that a steve­dore would have to work around 32 weeks of over­time a year to earn the fig­ure the employ­er is stat­ing, on top their base rate of 50–60K.

“What’s more, those hours would be worked on round the clock shifts every day of the year.”

Mr Parsloe says the Mari­time Uni­on gives a cat­egor­ic­al assur­ance to the pub­lic of New Zea­l­and that we’d hap­pily settle for $10 000 less a year for a 40 hour week than that fig­ure they are say­ing we are get­ting at the moment for a 26 hour week. So there is no need to talk about the money any more, which was nev­er the issue any­way.

He says the only people pos­sibly earn­ing inflated salar­ies at Ports of Auck­land are seni­or man­age­ment.

“We have repeatedly called for Ports of Auck­land man­age­ment to release a break­down of the salar­ies, perks and leave pro­vi­sions of seni­or man­age­ment so the pub­lic have the full pic­ture.”

“They con­tin­ue to ignore this request, which indic­ates they don’t want the inform­a­tion made pub­lic. They are happy to mis­rep­res­ent their work­ers, but not pre­pared to open them­selves up to trans­par­ency, which we believe is quite shame­ful.”