Maritime industry in crisis:
The NZ experience

The Maritime Union of New Zealand has launched a campaign to 
save the NZ maritime industry. The goal of the campaign is, "To 
ensure a future for the New Zealand maritime industry with 
permanent, secure jobs for workers, through legislative change 
and active unionism". The following article outlining the crisis 
is acknowledged to The Maritimes (March 2004) which is the 
Union's official magazine.

The Maritime Industry of New Zealand has reached the point of 
crisis

Workers on the waterfront and in New Zealand shipping are being 
hit repeatedly by attacks in a cut-throat industry that is 
dominated by short-term profits at the expense of long-term 
stability.

The viability of this vital industry is in jeopardy, with 
continual shakedowns of the workforce leading to casualisation, 
contracting out, job losses and company unions.

Job security is non-existent, and the future of young people in 
our industry is bleak. The time has come to fight back. Unless we 
turn the maritime industry in a new direction, it will be 
destroyed.

It is important to understand how we have got to this situation.

Free market policies unleash chaos

The wave of free-market Government policies in the late 1980s and 
early 1990s began the process.

Some of these policies were aimed directly at our industry with 
the goal of boosting business profits, regardless of the effect 
on working people.

Waterfront workers got the full hit of Port Reform in 1989, with 
the reduction of workforce numbers by 50 per cent.

Seafarers were attacked by the removal of cabotage in 1994.

This let in foreign and flag of convenience vessels to domestic 
cargo shipping routes at cheap rates, which has resulted in the 
progressive collapse of the New Zealand shipping industry.

A major factor undermining the industry was the Employment 
Contracts Act of 1991, which sparked a series of attacks by 
aggressive, anti-union employers that have continued through the 
Employment Relations Act of 2000.

In the period from 1991 until now, maritime workers have 
experienced wave after wave of industry changes.

Many of our members who made the commitment to stay in the 
industry lost their entitlements and conditions through the 
restructuring of companies, contracting out, and casualisation.

Little attention to social cost

During this process, the increasingly aggressive competition 
between employers has reduced the workforce to the status of 
pawns, with an apparent lack of concern from Government as to the 
social consequences and the implications for the future of the 
industry.

The large number of ports (and stevedores operating within these 
ports) has contributed to the problem.

International shipping companies have used the situation to their 
advantage, playing port against port, with port companies 
offering all-in rates which are not commercially viable.

Local shipping companies have been pushed out of the market as 
Flag of Convenience shippers dump capacity on domestic cargo 
routes, and operate ships with Third World conditions for their 
crews.

Some recent case studies of the industry in the last twelve 
months clearly illustrate these concerns.

Disruption of port workforces

Toll Stevedoring purchased BHP Stevedoring and employed a new 
workforce at Marsden Point, Northland.

Toll employed 12 people from the area, then because of lack of 
work started transferring this labour to Mount Maunganui with the 
flow-on effect of seriously hurting our existing Mount casual 
members' income.

These casuals had in most cases been loyal to Toll and BHP for 
many years, it was their sole income and they were all hoping to 
be offered full-time work.

The end result was that Toll had to make 8 of its Marsden new 
employees redundant.

Destruction of New Zealand shipping industry

New Zealand-owned and operated Pacifica Shipping has been a major 
employer of Maritime Union members.

In the last year Pacifica has withdrawn half its remaining fleet 
of ships operating on the New Zealand coastal trade, leaving only 
two in action, in the face of capacity dumping by Flag of 
Convenience ships that employ Third World crews in Third World 
conditions.

The New Zealand shipping industry is literally dying a death from 
a thousand cuts.

The Maritime Union has campaigned for a decade to reintroduce 
cabotage, or the reservation of New Zealand coastal shipping 
routes for New Zealand ships and New Zealand crews.

The Government's Shipping Industry Review noted in December 2000 
that cabotage would increase New Zealand's participation in 
shipping.

The Government's own Transport Strategy aims at providing an 
affordable, safe, integrated and sustainable transport system by 
2010.

Unless immediate action is taken, the New Zealand shipping 
industry will not be a part of this strategy, as it will no 
longer exist in any meaningful sense.

Contracting out rips away employees' conditions

CentrePort Wellington decided to set up a subsidiary company to 
handle its conventional ships, work covered by the Maritime Union 
and the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU).

Through a manipulated set of events and a contracting out 
exercise a new union was set up.

At that time CentrePort maintained a large list of casuals that 
worked on call.

The members of the new union encouraged some CentrePort casuals 
with little experience on the wharf to join their new union, 
resulting in a divided and hostile workforce and an ongoing 
legacy of bitterness.

CentrePort could not make a success of this operation and they 
facilitated the setting up of the Loading Company (which is 
supposedly autonomous of CentrePort).

The Company is owned by shipping company Quadrant and ISL 
(operated by Hans Axt) from Mount Maunganui — and operates its 
own in-house Union.

The problem here is that Maritime Union members were contracted 
out of work coverage by CentrePort.

The result is many faithful CentrePort casuals (some with service 
as long as 7 to 8 years) were never offered job interviews with 
the new company.

The other area of concern is [that] this company is operating 
unsafely.

In another major port, Toll Logistics successfully took a large 
stevedoring contract from P&Q Stevedores at the end of 2003 in 
Auckland.

To service this contract Toll purchased 100 per cent of an 
existing Auckland Stevedoring Company, Leonard and Dingley.

The consequences of this take-over is that existing employees of 
P&Q face redundancy, some may get a job with Toll and others face 
some form of casualisation.

Most of these affected P&O employees had already been laid off in 
the New Zealand Stevedoring (NZS) crash in 1997, when many lost 
in the vicinity of thirty thousand dollars in redundancy pay.

In another area, ANL has withdrawn from Auckland, leaving 
employees of Wallace Stevedoring with an uncertain future.

This company employs approximately 25 of our members; once again 
the majority of them lost their employment in the NZS crash.

Excess competition undermining port viability

One of the worst examples of shipping company manipulations was 
the recent set of events in the placing of the P&O Nedlloyd 4100 
box vessels.

Major investments were made by the Wellington and Lyttelton Port 
Companies in an unsuccessful effort to gain ship calls, a 
situation encouraged by P&O Nedlloyd.

A second example of this situation occurred at Bluff. Around 7 
years ago, the port company at Bluff purchased a new crane based 
on promises that shipping companies would, because of its 
purchase, utilise the port.

These promises failed to materialise and the Port Company, after 
some 3 years, sold the crane and downsized to an older model.

Until very recently MSC shipping owned the only container vessel 
servicing the Port, with its own ship cranes.

P&O decided to start a service from the Port with a gearless 
vessel, and the Port Company decided to purchase another crane 
which was to serve both MSC and P&O.

Following this major investment, both MSC and P&O announced they 
were reconfiguring to Port Chalmers.

Scab unions operating freely

ISO-subsidiary Mainland Stevedores work log ships in a number of 
South Island ports, using a mobile casualised labour force that 
comes under coverage of a "union" that is not recognised by any 
other genuine union, undermining permanent local jobs.

Safety and security issues at forefront

Safety issues are not being addressed and the industry clearly 
needs to have legislation with some bite, not voluntary 
guidelines and other weak and compromised regulations.

The groundings of a number of vessels in recent times has led to 
action on tightening up one area of shipping regulations, but 
other areas have been left out of equation.

The recent collapse of cranes on-board flag of convenience ships 
in Bluff and Port Chalmers since November 2003 shows the multiple 
negative effects of the deregulated "open" maritime industry.

Waterfront workers are now effectively working in Third World 
environments when they go aboard these ships to operate 
machinery.

These ships endanger workers, the environment and ports 
themselves, as well as destroying the jobs of New Zealand 
seafarers employed under New Zealand conditions.

It is truly a bizarre spectacle, when massive biosecurity 
operations are carried out after the escape of insect pests 
onshore, and anti-terrorist hysteria imprisons individual 
refugees — yet at the same time our ports and maritime industry 
are left wide open to a range of hazards through a "hands off" 
mentality.

The situation has reached crisis proportions

The maritime industry has reached such a low ebb that the morale 
of the workforce has become crippled in an atmosphere of 
insecurity and fear.

The Maritime Union has drawn a line in the sand, and is launching 
a nationwide campaign to bring some stability back to the 
maritime industries.