Change of competition law can bring sanity back to the wharves
The best way to clean up the waterfront is to remove the exemption of labour arrangements from competition laws that protect the maritime union’s labour monopoly.
Twenty-three years after the bitter waterfront dispute that brought some productivity and industrial sanity to our wharves, it seems we are back to square one. Indeed, we have gone backwards.
One of the protagonists at that time, Patrick Stevedores, now has an EBA that requires union permission to recruit employees. Hutchison Ports recently agreed to a clause that limited recruitment to family and friends of the employees, or those on a union list.
