The September 8-12 stoppage by 260 members of the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) took place during contract talks. In the negotiations, union representatives have proposed a formula for granting permanent status to the growing number of workers kept on for years as casual workers on call.
The day after picket lines came down, 250 workers attended a stop-work meeting and voted to empower union negotiators to issue notice of another seven-day strike if necessary. “We are going to mediation and will get a feel then of what will happen,” said Denis Carlisle, MUNZ Local 13 president.
The strike was part of a long-running battle by workers against the port companies’ increased employment of casual labor. Their efforts to defend their union against the employers’ divide-and-rule attempts were at the center of a previous strike in 2001.
“In our industry we have identified numerous full-time permanent stevedoring jobs that have in some cases been there for years. Yet the employer, Ports of Auckland Ltd., has refused to promote these [casual] workers,” said Carlisle in a leaflet handed out by pickets to passers-by, entitled “Why We Are on Strike.”
These workers “live on the end of a telephone, not knowing from day to day whether they will be required to work,” he said.
In a later release, Carlisle rejected claims by the Ports of Auckland that only a small minority of the workforce is temporary. “A very high number of our members on the ground are casual, insecure workers,” he said.
Strikers on the round-the-clock picket lines, who turned up for picket duty according to their work shifts, explained that the company categorises some part-time workers as permanent. There are several dozen “P-24” workers, said one. These workers are “guaranteed three eight-hour shifts a week, and then they are on call for more.”
One such P-24 worker told Militant reporters that he averages more than 40 hours a week. “There is enough work to make full-time positions,” he said, even allowing for the “highs and troughs in the industry”—a reference to the bosses’ claims that changes in freight patterns, which involve fewer ships of greater capacity, mean that they need a larger pool of workers on call.
Len Prasad, who has been a casual worker on the ports for almost six years, said that although he “will often get over 40 hours a week, there is no security. It’s life by the phone.” Prasad explained that not only do casuals miss out on sick pay and other benefits, they also receive significantly lower wages.
“Casualisation is just cheap labour” read one of the picketline placards. Another stated, “Nobody should be at anybody’s beck and call.” A high percentage of motorists passing by on the busy waterside street honked their horns in support.
A highlight of the strike was a solidarity rally on the morning of the strike’s third day, during which several representatives of the Maritime Union of Australia were greeted with a Maori welcome by strikers and supporters.
Leading up to the strike, the capitalist media in Auckland buttressed company arguments about the need to continue “restructuring”—in particular, stressing the competition it faces from the smaller Port of Tauranga.
In an interview published in the August 28 New Zealand Herald, Port of Tauranga chairman Fraser Mackenzie referred to his company’s assault on port unions and working conditions. “Tauranga closed the port for 35 days in 1989 to get a satisfactory labour arrangement,” he said.
Although the Tauranga port has taken some business and investment away from its Auckland rival, the latter port remains dominant on a national scale, handling two-thirds of the country’s imports, one-third of its exports, and 45 percent of all inbound and outbound containers. The company’s after-tax profits in the year to June rose by 20 percent. The striking unionists pointed to this reality to back up their fight for an end to casualisation of the ports, not just in Auckland but around the country.
Terry Coggan contributed to this article.
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