The
Maritime Union has put in a further 48-hour strike notice at Ports of
Auckland from 7am on Friday 30th December until 7 am
Sunday 1st January 2012.
Maritime
Union National President Garry Parsloe says the strike notice is a
legal requirement and can be withdrawn as soon as any progress is
made with Ports of Auckland CEO Tony Gibson.
“The
answer is in Mr Gibson’s hands. He can stop trying to attack the
union and the majority of his own workforce and start dealing with
the real issues. It’s simply a case of trying to get him back on
track.”
MUNZ
stated the issue is not and has never been about wage increases.
What
the Maritime Union and its members are concerned about is protecting
the conditions of employment, secure jobs, and ensuring a strong
collective agreement..
The
position of the CEO has no credibility. First of all he tries to
offer non-union workers a much greater wage increase than members of
the union in a blatant attempt to undermine the collective agreement.
Then he waves money around when this inconvenient fact is pointed out
to him. But it has nothing to do with the real issues at hand.”
Gibson’s
statements about flexibility while simultaneously claiming that he
intended
respecting
employees’ preferences about when they work were hollow, says MUNZ
“You
don’t respect something by undermining it. The flexibility Mr
Gibson describes means workers give up their family time, personal
life and normal existence to be called into work whenever the
employer wants. That’s the flexibility he means, in a nutshell.”
MUNZ
President said that Gibson seems to think family time or regular
hours and secure jobs are “restrictive and old fashioned.”
“It
is this attitude of regarding the well-being of his employees as an
impediment to raking in even more profit that is causing so many
problems in these negotiations.”
MUNZ
reports that the POAL agenda is also reflected in continued letters
from Gibson to members homes that have created stress and concern
for family members by threatening contracting out of work at the
port.
There
is an agenda of outsourcing and casualisation behind Ports of
Auckland management’s approach and that until Gibson starts to
negotiate on a more sensible basis, the strike notices will remain in
place.
If
port users are concerned about the effect of these stoppages, we
suggest they consider the result of some of Gibson’s more
hare-brained concepts that he is throwing around, such as complete
contracting out.”
Socialist
Appeal says
-
Support
Industrial Action -
No
to Casualisation
For
more information and to offer support go to www.munz.org.nz