Holmdale expected to sail today

Press, 12 October 1988, Page 9

Holmdale expected to sail today

Watersiders finished loading the Chatham Islands supply ship Holmdale yesterday by using cranes to “sling” cargo aboard.

Forklifts, normally used to load freight, were left idle, getting round a union demarcation dispute. Loading of the Holmdale was delayed last week when harbour workers formed a picket line to stop watersiders using a forklift owned by the stevedoring company.

Harbour workers who had sole rights to man forklifts now find port reform legislation allows stevedores to supply their own forklifts and employ watersiders to drive them. The harbour workers held a stop-work meeting yesterday to discuss the supension by the Lyttelton Port Company of members of the port’s tug and pilot boat crews. They agreed to support financially the suspended workers.. The crews were sus-

pended on Monday when they refused to help berth the Chinese roll-on ship Bai He Kou.

That all but stopped shipping movements through the port. Now only three ships — the Holmdale, and Pacifica’s roll-on ferries Spirit of Freedom and Spirit of Competition — can enter and leave the port because their masters have pilotage exemption certificates for Lyttelton Harbour. Other ships require a Harbour Board pilot aboard.

The Holmdale was, however, tied up because of the forklift wrangle. She is expected to leave for the Chathams at 10 a.m. today.

The Bai He Kou remains at anchor in Pegasus Bay. Three ships that were to have left in the last two days yesterday remained in port. The Holmdale’s loading had resumed on Monday, said the regional manager of New Zealand

Stevedores, Mr Brian Stevens.

The company had come to an agreement with watersiders to have the cargo "pre-slung” in Christchurch and taken to Lyttelton on trucks, where it was lifted direct from the trucks to the ship. Slinging cargo was normally watersiders’ work, he said. The secretary of the Lyttelton Watersiders’ Union, Mr Warren Collins, said the union had cooperated with the stevedores because there was a lot of perishable cargo to be loaded into the Holmdale, and watersiders saw the Holmdale as an essential service to the Chatham Islands.

Slinging had not been done to avoid harbourworker pickets, he said.

“The stevedores have not always used a forklift to load the Holmdale in the past,” he said. “It was just more expedient to sling the cargo in this instance.”