Transport workers mobilize as overseas rolling stock arrives in New Zealand

The New Zealand affil­i­ates of the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) met today to dis­cuss their con­cerns with the arrival of KiwiRail’s new loco­mo­tives in the coun­try.

The Chi­nese made loco­mo­tives will arrive on two dif­fer­ent ships into the Ports of Auck­land over the next 24 hours and be unloaded this week.

New Zealand ITF Con­venor and Pres­i­dent of the Mar­itime Union Gar­ry Parsloe says New Zealand work­ers are con­cerned and angry that local jobs and indus­try have been under­mined by send­ing the work over­seas.

“We keep on hear­ing how the coun­try is broke, and we all know how high unem­ploy­ment is, but KiwiRail and the Nation­al Gov­ern­ment are allow­ing work that should be done here in New Zealand to go over­seas, destroy­ing jobs and tak­ing mon­ey out of our com­mu­ni­ties.”

Mr Parsloe says the unions con­demned the out­sourc­ing of work over­seas when KiwiRail had the abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture in its own work­shops.

New Zealand rail work­ers are rep­re­sent­ed by the ITF affil­i­at­ed Rail and Mar­itime Trans­port Union (RMTU).

RMTU Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Wayne But­son says that 35 of the new flat top mul­ti func­tion­al wag­ons for KiwiRail have already been made at the Hill­side work­shops in Dunedin, but most had been con­tract­ed to Chi­na.

“We have demon­strat­ed our abil­i­ty and com­pe­ten­cy to build rolling stock here. The only fac­tor at play here is that cheap exploit­ed labour is used in Chi­na. Yet the mon­ey that could be spent in New Zealand com­mu­ni­ties, boost­ing jobs, skills and the future of indus­try, is being fun­neled out of the coun­try.”

“In the con­text of the recent bud­get, it is clear that this Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing a tun­nel vision approach to low­er­ing New Zealand’s nation­al debt bur­den. They are hap­py to see our cur­rent account deficit bal­loon out by the cost of these rail projects, at the same time as giv­ing our skilled rail­way trades­per­sons a belief that there is no future for them in New Zealand and they need to join the exo­dus to Aus­tralia where they will be quick­ly snatched up.”

The ITF unions will be meet­ing again this week to dis­cuss the way for­ward. ITF affil­i­ates in New Zealand include the Rail and Mar­itime Trans­port Union, Mar­itime Union of New Zealand, Engi­neer­ing, Print­ing and Man­u­fac­tur­ing Union, Nation­al Dis­tri­b­u­tion Union, Mer­chant Ser­vice Guild, and Avi­a­tion and Marine Engi­neers Asso­ci­a­tion, rep­re­sent­ing tens of thou­sands of New Zealand trans­port work­ers.

The ITF is made up of 681 unions rep­re­sent­ing 4,500,000 trans­port work­ers in 148 coun­tries. It is one of sev­er­al Glob­al Union Fed­er­a­tions allied with the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Union Con­fed­er­a­tion (ITUC).