Ports of Auckland management COVID-19 story “embarrassing” 

Claims by Ports of Auck­land that Gov­ern­ment quar­an­tine reg­u­la­tions are to blame for their fail­ures are embar­rass­ing and should be with­drawn.

A POAL spokesper­son com­plained on Mike Hosk­ing’s Break­fast Radio show yes­ter­day about a “maze like process” to import crane oper­a­tors.

The spokesper­son said “We have to fill out heaps of forms and wait weeks, and it would be great if some­one could help speed up every­thing.“

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the prob­lem is POAL man­age­ment.

He says the short­age of crane oper­a­tors in Auck­land came about because the port com­pa­ny has not trained enough staff over the last cou­ple of years and has relied on work­ers doing exces­sive hours.

“If they had main­tained their work­force, they would­n’t have a prob­lem. No oth­er Port is in this ridicu­lous sit­u­a­tion they have got Auck­land into.

The Union believes there could be up to 19 cur­rent employ­ees at the Ports of Auck­land who have pre­vi­ous­ly dri­ven the con­tain­er cranes at the Ports of Auck­land who are cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing super­vi­so­ry roles with­in the com­pa­ny who could be rede­ployed into the role.

Mr Har­ri­son says he believes there were options to trans­fer work­ers in from oth­er ports tem­porar­i­ly, and the Union had pre­vi­ous­ly assist­ed with this process in the past.

He says past employ­ees of the Ports of Auck­land are being declined employ­ment as steve­dores even though they oper­at­ed machin­ery still in use.

It was dis­turb­ing the Port Com­pa­ny seemed to be bring­ing into ques­tion the strict quar­an­tine pro­ce­dures that were keep­ing New Zealan­ders safe as COVID-19 rav­aged the rest of the world, he says.

The port man­age­ment is focused on an automa­tion process that had dragged on for years and is still not work­ing, he says.

“Port man­age­ment need to be hon­est with New Zealand about whether they have exhaust­ed all options avail­able to the com­pa­ny with­in New Zealand.”


Com­pa­ny email to job appli­cant with 10 plus years pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence as a strad­dle dri­ver at the Ports of Auck­land
 
Thanks again for your appli­ca­tion with Ports of Auck­land.

While you have pre­vi­ous­ly worked at the Ports, it was some time ago and we are there­fore unable to progress with your appli­ca­tion.  You would require full train­ing again and the cur­rent busi­ness deci­sion is that due to the high inter­est in these vacan­cies, we are only pro­vid­ing our cur­rent POAL staff with full train­ing and pro­gress­ing with exter­nal appli­cants who only require refresh­er train­ing.

We wish you all the best in your job search.

Kind regards

XXXXXXXX

POAL Recruit­ment