DP stevedores get FWC nod for 16-hour walkout - after Friday’s Sydney, Brisbane, Fremantle stoppage

A decision by DP World stevedores to stop work on Friday for 8 hours at the nation’s key ports has crippled freight services - now they have approval for a 16-hour walkout.

Port Botany terminals in Sydney where industrial action between DP World and the MUA is creating delays. Picture: NCA Newswire

The port dispute between Australia’s second-biggest stevedore, DP World, and the Maritime Union has dramatically ramped up after the Fair Work Commission ruled the stevedores can walk off the job for 16 hours, on top of the Friday stoppages at Sydney, Brisbane and Fremantle with a partial ban in place in Melbourne.

The MUA is required to give DP World five days’ notice for the move which will mean container ships will not be able to load or offload through any facilities run by Australia’s second biggest port operator DP World.

“DP World is willing to continue to negotiate with the MUA to get a deal as soon as possible, to stop the financial impact to the economy,” said DP World Oceana chief Nicolaj Noes after the company confirmed the FWC ruling.

The industrial action may the biggest at Australian ports since Hutchison Ports locked out its workers in 2015 and is causing chaos for importers and exporters with the nation’s farmers - who ship highly spoilable foods - facing massive financial losses if their products don’t arrive at their destinations on time.

Fletcher International Exports founder Roger Fletcher said that coming on top of drone attacks in the Red Sea and drought impacting the Panama Canal, the chaos at Australian ports could and should be fixed.

“Get on and fix the bloody thing up,” Mr Fletcher told The Australian. “It’s not just about meat, what about all the farmers’ perishable food products. Think about those poor buggers. It’s not a good look when people are hungry in the world and food is going to waste.”

At its heart this appears to be an ideological stand-off between the union, which wants DP World workers to earn at least close to as much as what workers at Patrick Corp receive; the global port operator wants pay to be based on productivity.

MUA assistant national secretary Adrian Evans said exporters and importers were right to be angry and accused the Dubai-owned DP World of “failing the pub test” when it came to paying fair wages.

“Customers of this multi-billion dollar company have every right to be frustrated with DP World’s refusal to negotiate and should demand that DP World CEO Nicolaj Noes gets to the table and settles the dispute,” Mr Evans said.

“This is the Dubai Government holding our country to ransom if its Australian workforce don’t accept a pay cut in a cost of living crisis. The MUA will not be bullied by the Dubai Government and nor should anybody else.”

The MUA has been taking selective industrial action at DP World ports since October over pay and rostering, and its desire to bring its enterprise bargaining agreements in line with rival stevedores’ so that multi-employer bargaining applies.

DP World is warning of a huge economic cost from the strike actions. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

DP World says the dispute has so far cost the nation more than $84m a week due to delays loading and unloading containers from ships, and urged the Albanese government to intervene by ordering the FWC to arbitrate.

“The decision of employees, who have been encouraged by the MUA to continue to refuse to perform their duties is leading to loss of productivity and is devastating to our supply chain as well as economic output,” Mr Noes said.

“Come Monday, delays on key items, such as meat, clothing and appliances, will be compounded. For business owners who are already having a tough time, it’s a monumental blow.”

DP World will not pay staff who engage in work bans from Friday.

It’s been a quarter of a century since the ports were the focus of a dispute over industrial relations and the trade union movement.

In the Patrick Stevedores dispute of 1998, the stevedore was backed by the Howard government.

This time, it’s a Labor government, and if the MUA succeeds in having its new EBA timed to end in 2025, it means all the timing of all stevedores’ EBAs lines up and the key Labor policy of multi-employer bargaining will apply.

The Prime Minister’s office had called for “all parties to engage with the FWC and find a solution in the best interests of everybody involved”, a spokesman said.

The “same work, same pay” legislation, passed in December, would mean stevedores from Patrick Corp, the biggest stevedore, as well as DP World and Hutchison Ports could all take industrial action at the same time, effectively shutting ports down if industrial relations issues flared.

The MUA is seeking a two-year pay deal with a 16 per cent rise, still lower than the 17 per cent Patrick stevedores earn.

It put forward a verbal offer on Thursday morning and has stated DP World should not be getting an unfair advantage by paying its workers less than rivals.

MUA assistant national secretary Adrian Evans said DP World “refused to meaningfully engage” with any of the issues or even put forward a formal wage offer to the union, adding Mr Noes had not attended any of the meetings over the past three days.

“Any chief executive or corporate leader who wanted to achieve an outcome would have walked into the room ready to work towards a deal, but clearly Mr Noes would rather litigate this through the media than sit down and work with us towards an outcome both sides can be comfortable with,” Mr Evans said.

“The truth is, Nicolaj Noes wants this dispute to drag on and … get worse so he has an excuse to lock out the workforce.”

DP World, which has about 40 per cent of the stevedoring market in Australia across ports in Brisbane, Sydney and Fremantle, said the latest statistics showed the industrial action has stalled about 48,327 containers, with a backlog likely to take up to eight weeks to clear.

As part of negotiations that concluded on Thursday, the MUA said it made DP World a written offer to try to end the dispute, but this looks likely to fail because Mr Noes does not believe his stevedores should be paid the same rate as those at Patrick, which has higher productivity due to being fully automated in Brisbane and Sydney.  

Mr Noes is no stranger to a wharf dispute, having previously run Svitzer Tugs, the largest tugboat operator in Australia, which threatened to locked out all its workers, represented by the MUA, just over a year ago.