Unions unite in Ports of Auckland labour blunder

The Ports of Auck­land has been put on notice from Unions that it will have to train its own work­force rather than fly in staff from oth­er ports.

The port com­pa­ny wants to trans­fer skilled labour from Welling­ton and Lyt­tel­ton to keep up with work after 12 weeks ago lay­ing off a sub­stan­tial num­ber of work­ers.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Vice Pres­i­dent Gar­ry Parsloe says the sit­u­a­tion is a result of the port com­pa­ny ignor­ing Union advice.

“They were told there were too many redun­dan­cies, and it would cre­ate a short­age of skilled work­ers. Now this has hap­pened.”

He says that the Mar­itime Union would only agree for Unionised work­ers being trans­ferred into Auck­land if there was a writ­ten com­mit­ment from the Ports of Auck­land to train a suf­fi­cient num­ber of its own work­force.

Rail and Mar­itime Trans­port Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Wayne But­son con­firmed his Union had a unit­ed stance with MUNZ on the issue.

There were con­cerns that the Port Com­pa­ny was attempt­ing to play off the unions against each oth­er.

He says the issue is about port employ­ers main­tain­ing skilled staff at their port, an issue that both unions have the same posi­tion on.

“Any pru­dent port employ­er knows they must pro­vide for vol­ume vari­abil­i­ty of ton­nage. Hav­ing an ade­quate sup­ply of suit­ably qual­i­fied staff so that these sit­u­a­tions don’t arise is Man­age­ment 101.”