Ports of Auckland squanders public money on anti-worker advocate

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand has con­demned the employ­ment of Jon Mayson by Ports of Auck­land Lim­it­ed (POAL) man­age­ment dur­ing the cur­rent indus­tri­al dis­pute.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Pres­i­dent Gar­ry Parsloe says the Port Com­pa­ny man­age­ment must make pub­lic the cost of employ­ing Mr Mayson and what his role will be.

“This man­age­ment are very good at cir­cu­lat­ing lies about the income of port work­ers, but have nev­er respond­ed to a request to let us know how much they earn.”

“So at least let us know how much mon­ey they are pay­ing out for Mr Mayson to attack their own employ­ees. After all, that mon­ey is being paid for by the peo­ple of Auck­land to wreck their own port.”

Mr Parsloe says a “top heavy” Ports of Auck­land man­age­ment were obvi­ous­ly inca­pable of man­ag­ing, and despite their con­sid­er­able salaries were throw­ing more pub­lic mon­ey towards out­side fix­ers and a fail­ing pro­pa­gan­da war against their own work­ers.

“POAL man­age­ment are now engaged in a politi­cized attack on their own work­force as part of a wider out­sourc­ing and pri­va­ti­za­tion agen­da.”

He says the dis­hon­esty of port com­pa­ny man­age­ment and their real agen­da was begin­ning to emerge under the unfor­giv­ing light of day.

“POAL man­age­ment say that they are engaged in a nego­ti­a­tion process, and they are con­sult­ing with their employ­ees – but at the same time they are bring­ing in expen­sive indi­vid­u­als whose only role is to out­source employ­ees jobs and destroy their fam­i­ly life through inse­cure hours of work and income.”

Mr Mayson is a for­mer CEO of Ports of Tau­ran­ga.

Mr Parsloe says the plight of work­ers at Ports of Tau­ran­ga has been ignored.

“These work­ers lives have been blight­ed by inse­cure jobs and casu­al­iza­tion, and the mul­ti­ple deaths of work­ers at Port of Tau­ran­ga in a short space of time is also ignored.”

Mr Parsloe says the actions of Ports of Auck­land man­age­ment had now attract­ed the atten­tion of the inter­na­tion­al work­ers move­ment and the lat­est move would result in con­tin­ued dis­rup­tion and harm to the Ports of Auck­land.

“As always the Mar­itime Union is offer­ing to work towards a nego­ti­at­ed solu­tion, where­as port man­age­ment are work­ing to their own agen­da which is becom­ing clear­er day by day.”