Maritime unions at loggerheads with BHP over foreign crews

Maritime unions have locked horns with BHP.

Dean Summers: “[It’s] hardly a crackdown, rather a human rights push to make sure those seafarers are being fed, are being paid and go home after their contract of up to a year at a time”. Picture: Richard Dobson

Maritime unions have locked horns with BHP after the union carried out a country-wide audit of foreign-crewed ships and ­accused the company of locking out their inspectors.

The show of union force comes after Bill Shorten accused BHP of jeopardising national sec­urity and local jobs after the company axed contracts for two Australian-crewed vessels that ship iron ore from Port Hedland to BlueScope’s Steelworks in Port Kembla. The move put 80 Australians out of work. The ships were the last two crewed by Australians servicing the iron ore industry.

The dispute comes as business grows increasingly concerned about union claims that Labor has agreed to mandate an increase in Australian-flagged and crewed ships and introduce tighter restrictions on the use of foreign ships by Australian companies, believing it will hike already high shipping costs.

Dean Summers, the national co-ordinator of the International Transport Workers Federation, affiliated with the Maritime Union of Australia, confirmed the union was carrying out audits of some of the foreign-crewed ships in response to the latest move by BHP. “If these ships come to Australia, I want to have a look at them. [It’s] hardly a crackdown, rather a human rights push to make sure those seafarers are being fed, are being paid and go home after their contract of up to a year at a time,” he told The Australian.

Mr Summers said that on January 22 and January 24 an ITF officer was barred from inspecting three ships, the SBI Aries, the Alisios and Frontier Bonanza, at the BHP-owned Hay Point Coal Terminal, just south of Mackay in northeast Queensland.

“We come through ports to get to ships every day of the year and BHP know us, we’ve been on a number of their ships. Because of the industrial problems we are now experiencing, they have clamped down on our capacity to inspect ships that they’ve chartered and there’s no transparency,” he said, adding his inspectors were all security vetted.

“They wish to operate in complete secrecy. How can we check if crews are being fed, how can we check if crews are being paid, how can we check this is not happening if BHP won’t let us get to the ships?”

A BHP spokesman confirmed the union officers were not ­allowed to conduct the inspections because they did not comply with certain protocols.

“The requests … weren’t granted because they didn’t comply with the standard access protocols. Granting access without appropriate notice and outside accepted procedure would have caused un­acceptable disruption to the safe and secure operations of the terminal,” he said.

“To ensure safety and security at Hay Point Coal Terminal, access to the site is restricted to ­people … essential to loading operations, and those with lawful authority to access. We regularly facilitate entry to the site for government inspectors and others with legal right of access.”

The Opposition Leader criticised BHP last month after the job losses, saying that having Australian ships had been important in transporting troops and supplies in World War II.

MUA secretary Paddy Crumlin then said Labor had agreed to mandate an increase in Australian-flagged and crewed ships, which led to warnings from business groups over increased costs.