Tauranga port happy to take the money – but not happy to accept responsibility for workers

Mr Fleet­wood says the con­tin­ued denial from the man­age­ment of the prin­ci­pal own­er Port of Tau­ran­ga to accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for what was going on in its port was grotesque.

He says it is dis­hon­est to claim the Port is mere­ly a “land­lord” when it oper­ates a Ter­mi­nal as well as being a share­hold­er in relat­ed busi­ness­es includ­ing Port of Timaru.

He says that unless Port com­pa­nies are made to have a duty of care towards all work­ers – and con­trac­tors – then the sit­u­a­tion would con­tin­ue.

“They will not do it them­selves because they are only inter­est­ed in prof­it, not peo­ple. It is set up to get them off the hook.”

Mr Fleet­wood says the “Tau­ran­ga mod­el” is bro­ken and the record of deaths and injuries in the port spoke for itself.

“Out­sourc­ing, con­tract­ing out and casu­al­iza­tion in ports means health and safe­ty comes last.”

Mr Fleet­wood says Port com­pa­nies use con­tract­ing out and out­sourc­ing to pump up prof­its at the expense of secu­ri­ty and safe­ty of work­ers.

He says when port boss­es and share­hold­ers preened them­selves about mas­sive prof­its, they were talk­ing about blood mon­ey.

“You can be sure the senior man­age­ment return safe and well to their homes every night, a priv­i­lege denied to the peo­ple who actu­al­ly do the work.”

Mr Fleet­wood says the atti­tude of the Port of Tau­ran­ga was clear.

This was most evi­dent when a work­er for a pri­vate steve­dore at the port was fatal­ly injured in August 2014, yet it took repeat­ed inquiries from the media for the employ­er, port com­pa­ny or author­i­ties to admit it had hap­pened.

“At the same time, the Port of Tau­ran­ga was boast­ing about its record prof­its and health and safe­ty record in their own pub­li­ca­tions.”

(See http://www.munz.org.nz/2014/08/27/lack-of-information-on-port-of-tauranga-death-extremely-concerning/ for fur­ther infor­ma­tion on this inci­dent.)