By Staff reporter
First published in the Sydney Morning Herald on May 7, 1976.
Ships berthing in the Harbour yesterday had to use their own power because of a strike by tug boat crews. Passengers on the Russian cruise ship Taras Shevchenko were forced to wait patiently to disembark at No 13 Pyrmont. They were delayed for almost three hours, by both the tug strike and because Customs officers could not handle the liners arriving.
And now a threat to petrol supplies
The national tug strike has brought the threat of a serious petrol shortage to NSW.
The Caltex oil refinery at Kurnell has almost exhausted its supplies of crude oil. Two loaded tankers are tied up in Westernport Bay and if they don’t reach Sydney by Sunday the major part of the refinery will shut down immediately. The rest will close on Monday if Saudi Arabian crude is not received.
The effect of the shut-down will be felt immediately throughout the state. The Caltex terminal at Banksmeadow is virtually dry and service stations are already running out of supplies.
Once the refinery closes it will not be able to resume full production for a week.
Tug masters and engineers in NSW voted on Wednesday to stay on strike until Monday. Deckhands will meet today to decide the length of their stoppage.
If they agree to match the masters then the refinery might still keep in partial operation with Arabian crude as a tanker is due on Sunday.
The assistant federal secretary of the Seaman’s Union, Mr Pat Geraghty, said yesterday that deckhand members of his union might not necessarily follow the masters and engineers.
The national meetings were to revise their position and he could not foresee the men’s decisions.
The present round of strike action began in Queensland on April 25 and spread to all states except Tasmania which has been exempted by the unions from the dispute. The 500 men involved belong to four unions - The Merchant Service Guild, the Institute of Marine and Power Engineers and the unions covering seamen and deckhands.
The are in dispute over the Tugboat Industry Award which they say is the only award not receiving wage indexation. They want a pay rise equal to the increases in the Consumer Price Index for the last three quarters.
The strike ended the following Friday, but by then the Caltex Oil Refinery at Kurnell had run out of crude oil. The processing units were so low that they would be kept running only by recirculating the last stocks of oil already in them. While tankers were on the way it would be a week before petrol supplies started flowing normally.