Maritime Union of New Zealand

The Maritime Union says workers at the Ports of Auckland have lifted container move rates at the port to record levels.

Maritime Union National President Garry Parsloe says productivity of workers at the Ports of Auckland is higher than ever before, but management were trying to negate the success of their own port.

He says for the last several weeks, the public had been bombarded with a stream of invective about the productivity failings of the workforce at Ports of Auckland by Port company management, as a management tactic during an industrial dispute.

However an internal document from Ports of Auckland management in September 2011 celebrates the “best crane rate ever” at Ports of Auckland.

The document is entitled “Celebrate September Crane Results – it’s BBQ time.”

The document notes that “Over the month of September we had four record breaking vessel performances” and notes the details for the four ships, inviting workers to a celebration BBQ.

Mr Parsloe says it seems port management have a different story for each day of the week.

He says that since management had been circulating negotiation documents to political bloggers and other third parties, the Maritime Union would now release its documentation as well to media on request.

“Frankly it seems bizarre that Ports of Auckland management are doing their best to run down their own public image rather than promote the capability and productivity of their workforce.”

The Maritime Union says it intends to make sure a Government inquiry into transport and logistics is not just about promoting privatization in the ports sector.

Maritime Union of New Zealand General Secretary Joe Fleetwood says the Union will be taking an active and critical approach in its contributions to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into International Freight Transport Services.

“We won’t be accepting any status quo thinking and ‘free market is best’ assumptions that sometimes accompanies these reports.”

Key issues for the Union include keeping control of New Zealand ports in New Zealand hands.

Mr Fleetwood says any move to privatize ports would quickly result in the control of New Zealand’s logistics infrastructure passing to GNT (global network terminal) operators and shippers, who would operate the system for their own benefit, not New Zealand’s benefit.

He says many problems with New Zealand ports currently come from lack of planning and co-ordination, not through lack of competition.

“The Maritime Union is proposing a KiwiPort concept where port ownership remains in community control but national co-ordination is used to minimize disruption and end the duplication of infrastructure we currently see.”

The Maritime Union had been arguing for years that secure permanent jobs, a career path for young people entering the industry, and world leading health and safety had to underpin any productivity gains.

“There is no point expecting productivity from casualized workers who are not properly trained and for whom there is no career path. But this is the approach of many employers in the industry.”

“We will be making sure that productivity is not just an accounting term for employer profit, but refers to the wellbeing of workers in the industry.”

He says the Union questions some of the assumptions suggested by the Productivity Commission, including a concept of competition as an intrinsic good.

“In the maritime industry, competition has driven corner cutting on health and safety which has led to deaths and injuries, downwards pressure on wages and conditions resulting in casualization, and a lack of national co-ordination in the port sector.”

“We are looking at the real world situation, not an economics textbook. We are the people who are out there being productive around the clock and we expect our voices to carry some weight.”

The Maritime Union is also promoting a much greater role for coastal shipping as an important part of the low-impact, environmentally sustainable transport mix of the 21st century.

Coastal shipping and regional ports also provide an important security and civil defence function, as had been seen during the Christchurch Earthquake disaster, when ports provided the main emergency logistics link for relief supplies.

The Maritime Union has called for a “productivity dividend” from employers to spread the wealth created by new technology in the workplace.

Maritime Union of New Zealand General Secretary Trevor Hanson says that the growing use of automated technology in the workplace could have harmful effects in a recession unless the profits were shared.

He says that unless the productivity gains of new technologies are distributed throughout society, especially to displaced workers, it would result in social catastrophe.

“The Union is all for new technology, but only if its introduction did not lead to unemployment, casualization and deskilling of large numbers of people.”

He says a number of technological advances had been seen in recent times, including self-service in supermarkets and airports, processing systems in meat and agriculture, as well as the use of outsourcing of callcentre and similar work overseas.

Mr Hanson says that a productivity dividend could pay for reduced working hours, higher wages, retraining, better social services, and would stimulate economic demand.

“The path we are on at the moment will lead to an impoverished class of people in the midst of plenty.”

Mr Hanson says that we live in a high tech society that still had primitive attitudes towards the value of human beings.

He says that social progress was lagging behind technological progress.

“In the short to medium term, it is no good telling workers put out of work that in the long run it will make things better. There needs to be a system where the disruption of new technologies can be minimized for working people, the majority of the population, and work for them.”

“We want to see social progress alongside technological progress, and that means a much greater distribution of the wealth created by new technologies.”

Mr Hanson says that deregulated free market globalization had the potential to wreck societies like New Zealand.

“There is a naive view that if we deregulate everything and leave it to the free market that we will automatically get a balanced and secure society, but this is clearly not the case.”