South Port faces strike action

South Port in Bluff is facing strike action after port work­ers rejec­ted a pay offer from man­age­ment.

The Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and has giv­en notice of 48 hours of strike action to take place from 7am Wed­nes­day 31 Janu­ary end­ing 7am Fri­day 2 Feb­ru­ary 2024. There may be fur­ther action to fol­low.

Mari­time Uni­on Bluff branch sec­ret­ary Ray Fife says the action comes after 60 mem­bers at South Port voted “over­whelm­ingly” in favour of strike action. 

The Col­lect­ive Employ­ment Agree­ment expired on 31 August 2023 and nego­ti­ations have failed to resolve the dif­fer­ences between man­age­ment and work­ers, says Mr Fife.

“The employ­er will not shift from a wage increase based off the Con­sumer Price Index (CPI), which is not accept­able to the work­ers.”

Mr Fife says liv­ing costs in the loc­al area have ris­en high­er than the CPI, espe­cially with the cost of hous­ing and rent. 

He says the base rate for water­front work­ers had his­tor­ic­ally been low and was cur­rently at $25.30 per hour.

Even with skill-based pay tiers and over­time, wages were not meet­ing liv­ing costs for employ­ees, many of whom have spent years with the com­pany, he says.

Mr Fife says the port com­pany has been per­form­ing well in the last two years, with high­er returns than in the pre­vi­ous three years. 

South Port had made sub­stan­tial cap­it­al expendit­ure, which shows its con­fid­ence in the future of the port, he says. 

“How­ever, we feel that the con­tri­bu­tion of the work­force towards the suc­cess of the port has been over­looked. The work­ers deserve a fair share of the profits and a recog­ni­tion of their skills and exper­i­ence,” he says.

Mr Fife says South Port has a major­ity hold­ing by Envir­on­ment South­land, and there is an expect­a­tion it would have a high level of social respons­ib­il­ity. 

He says the 2023 South Port annu­al report had noted the dif­fi­culty in retain­ing and recruit­ing staff.

In 2023, there had been a 19% staff turnover rate with South Port admit­ting some key staff had been “poached” by oth­er loc­al busi­nesses or oth­er ports.

The Annu­al Report noted the com­pany had “struggled” to fill some vacan­cies which had res­ul­ted in tem­por­ary work­load pres­sures that “required care­ful man­age­ment” to main­tain safe oper­a­tions and staff mor­ale.

Mr Fife says an obvi­ous solu­tion to mak­ing employ­ment at the Port attract­ive was a boost to the base pay rates, which would be more cost effect­ive in the long term than a “churn” of depart­ing and arriv­ing work­ers with its neg­at­ive impact on port per­form­ance.

He says a his­tor­ic­ally good rela­tion­ship between the employ­er and port work­er is being put in jeop­ardy by man­age­ment’s stance. 

Mr Fife says port work­ers were aware the com­pens­a­tion for dir­ect­ors, Chief Exec­ut­ive and seni­or man­age­ment had ris­en from $2.33 mil­lion in 2022 to $2.71 mil­lion in 2023.

Thir­teen man­agers at the port were mak­ing over $210,000 per annum in the 2022/2023 year.

The total remu­ner­a­tion of the Chief Exec­ut­ive for 2023 was $552,021 – an increase of 14.3% over the pre­vi­ous year.

Mr Fife said these increases were far more gen­er­ous than what work­ers were seek­ing, and indic­ated a com­pany that was doing well and could afford to invest in its work­force.

“We are will­ing to resume nego­ti­ations at any time, but we need a real­ist­ic offer from the com­pany. We hope that they will come to the table with a bet­ter pro­pos­al that reflects the value of our work,” he says.