Where are the fishing industry jobs for young New Zealanders?

The Mar­itime Union says the fish­ing indus­try must pro­vide well paid jobs for New Zealand work­ers rather than rely­ing on over­seas labour.

The Union was respond­ing to yes­ter­days (Thurs­day 7 March) announce­ment of the first reflag­ging of a for­eign char­ter ves­sel under the New Zealand flag, fol­low­ing a Min­is­te­r­i­al Inquiry into the fish­ing indus­try.

Mar­itime Union Nation­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood says the Union agreed the reflag­ging was a basic step but this was not a time for cel­e­bra­tion.

There was no indi­ca­tion of any seri­ous attempt to get more oppor­tu­ni­ties for New Zealand work­ers in the indus­try.

“We have tens of thou­sands of unem­ployed young peo­ple in New Zealand and they deserve a chance to get the ben­e­fit from resources that belong to all of us.”

Mr Fleet­wood says youth unem­ploy­ment was a social cat­a­stro­phe in New Zealand and the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to build a career path­way for young peo­ple into our fish­ing indus­try.

He says that recent inci­dents and con­vic­tions for ille­gal activ­i­ties by for­eign flagged ves­sels showed that an indus­try cleanup was “just begin­ning”.

“There is a long way to go to even begin to get this indus­try in shape.”

Mr Fleet­wood says the dam­age has already been done to the inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion of New Zealand fish­eries.

“More impor­tant­ly, we look back at a decade in which Gov­ern­ment avoid­ed deal­ing with sys­temic and fla­grant abus­es in the indus­try that have caused immense harm to many peo­ple.”

He says the Mar­itime Union would con­tin­ue to assist over­seas crews and pro­mote sea­far­ers rights as an affil­i­ate of the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion.