Ports of Auckland management dealings with political activists creates angry response from workers

The Mar­itime Union says that the Ports of Auck­land man­age­ment has delib­er­ate­ly under­mined nego­ti­a­tions by releas­ing let­ters to its employ­ees to hos­tile polit­i­cal activists.

Mar­itime Union Nation­al Pres­i­dent Gar­ry Parsloe says the far right wing polit­i­cal blog­ger Cameron Slater of Whale Oil blog was boast­ing on his web­site about being giv­en let­ters about cur­rent nego­ti­a­tions intend­ed for Ports of Auck­land employ­ees by Ports of Auck­land man­age­ment.

The let­ters had been uploaded into the pub­lic domain and used as the basis for vitu­per­a­tive attacks on Ports of Auck­land work­ers by the blog.

Mr Parsloe says this “mas­sive dis­re­spect” by man­age­ment had been greet­ed with dis­be­lief by Mar­itime Union mem­bers at Ports of Auck­land.

“Not only has Ports of Auck­land CEO Tony Gib­son gone against the spe­cif­ic requests of Mar­itime Union mem­bers to nego­ti­ate through their elect­ed offi­cials rather than bom­bard­ing them with let­ters, he has now gone beyond the pale by send­ing hos­tile polit­i­cal activists com­plete mis­in­for­ma­tion about wages and con­fi­den­tial let­ters to his own staff.”

Mr Parsloe says he now has a chal­lenge for Ports of Auck­land CEO Tony Gib­son.

“The chal­lenge is for him to imme­di­ate­ly release all doc­u­men­ta­tion regard­ing his salary and perks, and that of all senior man­age­ment at Ports of Auck­land, into the pub­lic domain for open dis­cus­sion.”

“Let the pub­lic decide whether he is worth his wages and spe­cial ben­e­fits. Con­sid­er­ing the unfold­ing dis­as­ter he has cre­at­ed at his work­place, they may be sur­prised at his gen­er­ous remu­ner­a­tion.”

Mr Parsloe says Ports of Auck­land work­ers were angry by claims of inflat­ed wages when many worked hun­dreds of hours of over­time a year on round the clock shifts includ­ing overnight, week­ends and pub­lic hol­i­days in a heavy indus­tri­al envi­ron­ment.

“Mr Gib­son has politi­cized this dis­pute by involv­ing extrem­ist polit­i­cal activists in our nego­ti­a­tions.”

“It’s extreme­ly hard to get nego­ti­a­tions on track when Mr Gib­son con­tin­ues to destroy his rela­tion­ship with employ­ees by strange and bizarre actions like this.”

Mr Parsloe says the involve­ment of oth­er third par­ties in the dis­pute such as the Auck­land Cham­ber of Com­merce, who were run­ning a clan­des­tine email cam­paign based on dis­cred­it­ed infor­ma­tion, had also set back nego­ti­a­tions at the Ports of Auck­land.

Mr Parsloe says if Mr Gib­son wants to involve extrem­ist right wing blog­gers, the Cham­ber of Com­merce, and oth­er exter­nal unre­lat­ed third par­ties in nego­ti­a­tions, then he was enti­tled to do this.

“He can nego­ti­ate with his friends all he wants. Unfor­tu­nate­ly none of them work at Ports of Auck­land mov­ing con­tain­ers and car­ry­ing out all the essen­tial work around the Port, so it is hard to see how it is going to achieve much.”

“In the case of Ports of Auck­land work­ers, Mr Gib­son’s cred­i­bil­i­ty is at an all time low. This should be of major con­cern to local users of the port who will con­tin­ue to be dis­ad­van­taged and dis­rupt­ed by the fail­ure to get nego­ti­a­tions back on track by Mr Gib­son.”