Skilled New Zealand workers turned down for jobs at Ports of Auckland

Ports of Auck­land Lim­it­ed CEO Tony Gib­son has told media that there are no New Zealand work­ers avail­able for key jobs includ­ing crane and strad­dle dri­vers.

How­ev­er the Union has an email from a for­mer POAL employ­ee dat­ed 2 Decem­ber 2020 that turns him down for a job as a strad­dle dri­ver, and instead offers a role for skilled lash­ing work on a ship (see below.)

The work­er had more than ten years of pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence at the port dri­ving Strad­dle Car­ri­ers and oth­er Port Machin­ery, and was one the very oper­a­tors POAL say they are short of and whom would help alle­vi­ate the staffing issues.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says any “labour short­age” is being caused by POAL mis­man­age­ment.

He says the com­pa­ny has relied on staff work­ing exces­sive hours, and due to the Union high­light­ing Health and Safe­ty con­cerns, the com­pa­ny has reduced the amount of hours required to be worked in a sev­en day peri­od.

“For sev­er­al years, MUNZ has warned man­age­ment they need­ed to ensure they had ade­quate lev­els of skilled labour in the port but they con­tin­ued to reduce staffing lev­els as part of their failed automa­tion plan”. 

The Port has been well aware of its staffing issues as steve­dores were work­ing exces­sive hours last year and lead­ing up to the COVID-19 lock­down ear­li­er this year, says Mr Har­ri­son.

“Over the past few years our Union has high­light­ed the under­util­i­sa­tion of Steve­dores in the var­i­ous roles and also the reluc­tance of the Ports of Auck­land to train MUNZ mem­bers into some of the key roles.”

He says the rea­sons for Mr Gib­son say­ing New Zealand work­ers were not avail­able were for him to explain to the share­hold­ers of the port, and those who had been affect­ed by the freight back­log at the Port.

Mr Har­ri­son says the email response to the job appli­cant shows  the Ports of Auck­land is not exhaust­ing all the oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to them to try and solve the con­ges­tion. 

He says that the POAL Chair­per­son and Board need to take own­er­ship of the prob­lems as the Port’s prob­lems were affect­ing the whole coun­try.   

“Change is required at the top at Ports of Auck­land and the New Year would be a good time to get the port back on track unless Auck­lan­ders want to see these same issues con­tin­u­ing on through to the major­i­ty of next year.”

POAL man­age­ment have giv­en numer­ous dates over the pre­vi­ous years for automa­tion to be up and run­ning and to date they con­tin­ue to fall short, says Mr Har­ri­son.  

LETTER FROM POAL:

Hi,

Thank you for your appli­ca­tion for the Steve­dore — Strad­dle Driver/Reach Stack­er posi­tion at Ports of Auck­land.
Unfor­tu­nate­ly at this stage we do not feel your expe­ri­ence meets our cri­te­ria for this posi­tion, how­ev­er we would like to know if you would be inter­est­ed in being con­sid­ered for a Lash­er posi­tion?

A Lash­er is respon­si­ble for secur­ing and releas­ing the equip­ment on board a ship that secures con­tain­ers for safe trans­porta­tion. This phys­i­cal­ly demand­ing role involves heavy lift­ing and is absolute­ly key for oper­a­tions.

If yes, please respond to this email by 9am Fri­day 4th Decem­ber stat­ing “Yes I am inter­est­ed in a Lash­er posi­tion”.

We thank you again for your inter­est in work­ing at Ports of Auck­land.

Kind regards,

(Name removed)
Recruit­ment Spe­cial­ist — Peo­ple & Capa­bil­i­ty

Please note I work Mon­day, Wednes­day & Fri­day