Meetings to decide wharf action

Press, 12 August 1989, Page 2

Meetings to decide wharf action

By

PAM MORTON

Watersiders will hold national stop-work meetings on Monday to decide their reaction to employer demands to dismantle their national award.

Waterfront union leaders met on Thursday to plan a strategy, and their recommendations will go to union members on Monday morning. The union is remaining silent about its plans but the national secretary of the Waterfront Workers’ Union, Mr Sam Jennings, has already warned of a national stoppage, possibly on the scale-6f the 1951 dispute.

ing, harvesting, the internal transporting and processing of logs will count for nothing if real reform is not addressed and achieved in the waterfront industry,” he said.

Other industries were ready to invest billions of dollars in the forest industries of New Zealand to create new jobs and earn much needed export receipts, Mr Quinn said.

Notice of industrial action was filed after the breakdown in national award talks on Tuesday. The dispute stems from employer efforts to capitalise on Government reform measures on the waterfront. On October 1 the Waterfront Industry Commission, which administers the labour pool at ports, will be disbanded and employers are pushing for individual port awards. The secretary of the Lyttelton Waterfront Workers’ Union, Mr Warren Collins, said industrial action appeared to be the only option left to the union.

“This will not occur unless all the investment factors are met including waterfront reform.” Mr Mike Roche, the chairman of the Association of Bulk and Homogenous Shippers, a group representing 20 of the biggest cargo interests in New Zealand, said structural reform on the waterfront was overdue.

Cargo interests had been “through hell” in the last five years and now was the time for the last bastion of inefficiency to be cleared up, said Mr Roche.

The president of the New Zealand Employers’ Federation, Mr Ron Arbuckle, said business people considered portby- port bargaining to be the only appropriate method of achieving reform in waterfront employment and work practices.

He warned that any action was likely to be prolonged. There was a lot of information to be discussed with union members, Mr Collins said. Several importing and exporting groups have spoken out in support of employer demands for port-by-port bargaining. A spokesman for the New Zealand Forest Industries Council, Mr Paul Quinn, said the waterfront industry must face market realities and implement efficiency measures as other sectors of the economy had been forced to. “Efficiency gains already achieved in plant-

“While . strike action would be damaging, employers are determined that such action will not be permitted to affect the desired outcomes of reform.” Farmers have said they will not be intimidated by industrial action. Mr Chamberlin said that if watersiders were determined to strike then farmers would outlast them.