Warning flag over overseas labour in Rena cleanup

The Mar­itime Union is con­cerned that jobs on the Rena clean up project are going to over­seas work­ers while New Zealand sea­far­ers are out of work.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood says he is con­cerned that two jobs on the ocean going tug Resolve Com­man­der con­tin­ue to be worked by over­seas crew mem­bers while local sea­far­ers who are able to do the work are unem­ployed.

He says the Union has been told that the Asso­ciate Min­is­ter of Immi­gra­tion had approved exten­sions of expired work visas for Fil­ipino crew mem­bers who had already been work­ing for over a year on the ves­sel.

The Mar­itime Union had not had any sat­is­fac­to­ry answers as to why this was allowed, and will be ask­ing for a meet­ing with the Min­is­ter to dis­cuss the prob­lem.

Mr Fleet­wood says it is espe­cial­ly galling that the sit­u­a­tion was with the Rena clean up.

“Here we have a flag of con­ve­nience, over­seas owned and crewed ship that end­ed up on a reef with great finan­cial and envi­ron­men­tal cost. Now the New Zealand tax­pay­er is foot­ing the bill for the clean up, but skilled and trained New Zealand sea­far­ers are denied work on the project and are not able to con­tribute to their own coun­try.”

Mr Fleet­wood says the Union has no prob­lem with over­seas work­ers being employed on New Zealand terms and con­di­tions but only if all qual­i­fied New Zealand work­ers in the indus­try already had jobs.

“Oth­er­wise this is just a recipe for attack­ing wages and con­di­tions, putting New Zealan­ders out of work, and reduc­ing stan­dards in the indus­try.”

The Union car­ried out much work assist­ing over­seas sea­far­ers free of charge and the Union view was the respon­si­bil­i­ty lay with the employ­er and the Gov­ern­ment, he says.

It appeared that some employ­ers were push­ing the bound­aries and the Gov­ern­ment was appar­ent­ly hap­py with New Zealand work­ers being kept out of work delib­er­ate­ly.

There had been ongo­ing lack of train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for New Zealan­ders in the indus­try and over­seas work­ers were being used to allow some employ­ers to renege on their oblig­a­tion to employ and train local work­ers, says Mr Fleet­wood.

He says the Union expect­ed sub­stan­tial jobs growth in the off­shore oil and gas indus­try for sea­far­ers in the future and was rais­ing a flag of warn­ing that those jobs should be going to local work­ers if avail­able.

“What we don’t want to see is this indus­try being used as a mon­ey machine for glob­al big busi­ness while New Zealand work­ers are denied well paid jobs in their own nation­al indus­try.”