BY ROBERT DARCY
New Zealand's Waterfront Workers Union (WWU) is locked in a major dispute with forestry giant Carter Holt Harvey (CHH) over the contracting of cheap labour to load log ships in South Island ports. Over the last three months pickets have been held in the ports of Timaru, Bluff, Port Chalmers and Nelson.
Support for the pickets is growing with recent participants including firefighters, nurses and teachers, as well as MPs from New Zealand's Green Party. Pickets in late January were joined by a delegation from the Maritime Union of Australia led by MUA assistant national secretary Jim Tannock.
A heavy handed response from police has resulted in many arrests. The January 30 New Zealand Herald reported that police used "an aggressive crowd control tactic called the flying wedge" to break through picket lines at Bluff on January 29.
Protests are continuing despite the commencement last week of mediation talks between the parties involved in the dispute.
CHH has bypassed local South Island stevedoring companies that use WWU labour and contracted the work to the Tauranga (North Island) based company Mainland Stevedoring. Mainland Stevedoring employs mainly casual workers on lower wages enabling them to undercut local stevedores when bidding for contracts.
According to a report in the November 25 Southland Times, Mainland Stevedoring were offering casual employment at NZ$13.50 an hour. In contrast, Southland Stevedores, one of the companies Mainland undercut, pays its permanents NZ$19.50, along with holiday pay and subsidised medical insurance.
By competing for contracts with local South Island stevedoring companies that have a larger base of permanent staff, Mainland Stevedoring is undermining the wage levels and job security of South Island wharfies.
CHH claims that the Mainland Stevedoring is simply concerned with costs when dealing with its log exports. The WWU is equally concerned about wages, security of employment and safe working conditions.
According to a report in the January 31 Southland Times, Mainland Stevedoring's workers are members of the Amalgamated Stevedores Union, which claims one hundred members and was registered last year. New Zealand's Employment Relations Act, introduced by the Labour-Alliance government, allows any group of 15 or more workers to negotiate a contract after forming a "union".
The WWU, which has a membership of 1000, views Amalgamated Stevedores as a "yellow union" doing management's bidding. Terry Ryan, assistant general secretary of the WWU believes that CHH is using Mainland Stevedoring and the new union to move towards a waterfront staffed almost entirely by casual workers.
The argument that CHH is simply concerned about the cost of the log shipments currently contracted is undermined by the obviously significant costs associated with flying in scabs from the North Island and paying for security guards, vans and hotel rooms.
In response to this situation Maritime Union of Australia national secretary Paddy Crumlin has pledged MUA support to the New Zealand WWU.
"Mainland is flying industrial mercenaries into ports in an attempt to break down the job entitlements of stevedoring workers. They're hiring security guards and enlisting out of town police to violently break the pickets. It's not unlike what we went through during the Patrick dispute", explained Crumlin.