Ship leaves without unloading containers
By
YVONNE MULDER
A Soviet container ship on her maiden voyage to Lyttelton left before she was completely unloaded because of an industrial dispute.
The Kapitan Artjukh was due to unload 100 empty containers at the. container terminal but left with 30 of them still on board.
The Waterside Workers’ Union said the ship was , not fully cellular and therefore could not be worked at the terminal. The Lyttelton Harbour Board maintained that the ship was fully cellular and that similar ships had been worked at the terminal before.
The problem arose because some of the vessel’s load of 20ft containers was stacked in 40ft holds. This meant that men had to go into the holds to
release the cones which bound the containers together, said the secretary of the Watersiders’ Union, Mr Warren Collins.
Manning levels did not allow for that extra work, and it was also an issue of safety, he said. “The crane works very close to the .men and space down there is so confined that they have nowhere to go," he said. The manager of the container terminal, Mr Bill Siddall, said the 70 containers that were unloaded had been stored in 20ft slots and therefore were not in dispute. It was normal practice to work 20ft containers out of a 40ft hatch. A ruling by the Port Conciliation Council , had agreed with that and ordered the ship to be worked, he said. This was not accepted by the watersiders and no
cargo was offloaded from the Kapitan Artjukh during' the week-end. The ship sailed on Monday with almost one-third of her load still on board.
The vessel is due at the Wellington, container terminal today and the same problem could arise, as all New Zealand's container terminals work under the one industrial agreement A spokesman for the ship’s agent Geo. H. Scales, said the issue would be discussed by the watersiders and the Wellington Harbour Board in Wellington today. The Kapitan Artjukh is due back at Lyttelton within the next two weeks to load 40 containers of wool.
“We hope the next time the ship calls all this business will be sorted out,” said the Scales spokesman.
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Bibliographic details
Press, 29 April 1987, Page 3
Word Count
368Ship leaves without unloading containers Press, 29 April 1987, Page 3
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