Dispute delays loading ship’s cargo

Press, 7 October 1988, Page 4

Dispute delays loading ship’s cargo

The loading of cargo into the Chatham Islandsbound Holmdale is unfinished as the dispute over who should drive the forklift to load the ship continues. Harbour workers mounted a picket on the wharf beside the Holmdale on Wednesday to stop watersiders from loading the ship using a forklift owned by the stevedoring company that employs them — a job that in the past was done by harbour workers using a harbour board forklift. Recent changes to the law that covers port operations mean that stevedores can now use their own equipment to work cargo on the wharves. The regional manager of New Zealand Stevedores, Mr Brian Stevens, said last evening that the Lyttelton Port Company, which now operates the port, was trying to make stevedores hire harbour workers to drive all equipment on the wharves, even if it was owned by the stevedores. In the case of the Holmdale his company stood to save more than $12,000 a year by using a watersider from the gang already working on the ship to drive a forklift, instead of hiring a forklift and harbour worker from the port company, he said. The general manager of the Lyttelton Port Company, Mr lan Brokenshire, said that while the new laws said that stevedore had the right to provide their own equipment, the laws did not say the stevedores had the right to choose who drove the equipment on the wharves.