Ports of Auckland workers plan to meet during strike

The Mar­itime Union has issued a strike notice at the Ports of Auck­land, for a 24 hour strike start­ing 7am Tues­day 31 Jan­u­ary to 7am Wednes­day 1 Feb­ru­ary.

Mar­itime Union Nation­al Pres­i­dent Gar­ry Parsloe says the strike notice has been put in so work­ers can get togeth­er at a meet­ing at the end of the month to dis­cuss POAL man­age­ment plans to out­source their jobs.

Mr Parsloe says the Union would con­sid­er can­cel­ing the strike notice if man­age­ment pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all union mem­bers to meet at the same time, but up to now the com­pa­ny had refused to do this.

He says it is irre­spon­si­ble for man­age­ment to threat­en work­ers with the loss of their jobs and liveli­hoods of their fam­i­lies while refus­ing to nego­ti­ate.

“We have offered to work with man­age­ment on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty mea­sures but there seems to be some oth­er agen­da com­ing from man­age­ment.”

“The CEO seems to have no empa­thy or under­stand­ing of the dis­rup­tion and the wor­ry he is caus­ing his employ­ees by his actions. Rea­son­able peo­ple will under­stand how his actions are caus­ing this dis­pute to wors­en by the day.”

Mr Parsloe says if the Ports of Auck­land CEO was gen­uine­ly con­cerned about dis­rup­tion from occa­sion­al strikes, then he must imme­di­ate­ly demon­strate his sin­cer­i­ty by aban­don­ing his plan to out­source the jobs of port work­ers, which would result in months of ongo­ing dis­rup­tion and harm for the Auck­land econ­o­my.

“This is of course total­ly unnec­es­sary when the Union is hap­py to meet and con­tin­ue to find a nego­ti­at­ed solu­tion, but we will not be dic­tat­ed to and bul­lied into sur­ren­der­ing the rights of our mem­bers.”