Ports across country brace for strike disruption

Ports face weeks of disruption as unions highlight aggressive tactics by the country’s biggest tug operator.

Maritime Union of Australia national secretary Paddy Crumlin has warned of an escalation of legal industrial action. Picture: AAP

The nation’s ports face weeks of disruption as unions highlight aggressive tactics by the country’s biggest tug operator to urge the federal government to wind back the powers of employers to get pay deals ripped up.

Ahead of port strikes across five states on Friday, including 24-hour stoppages in Melbourne and Brisbane, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the power of employers to unilaterally apply to terminate enterprise agreements would be on Labor’s agenda to fix the bargaining system at next month’s Jobs and Skills summit.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus accused Svitzer of exploiting “serious loopholes in our broken bargaining system” by seeking to terminate their agreement and cut wages by up to 50 per cent.

“The threat of agreement termination is one of the ways the current system gives employers too much power during bargaining,” she said.

“The dangerous work which is done every day by workers at Svitzer should be paid fairly, not rewarded with massive pay cuts facilitated by a broken system.”

Maritime Union of Australia national secretary Paddy Crumlin warned there would be an escalation of legal industrial action if Svitzer succeeded in terminating its enterprise agreement with unions and forcing workers back to the award’s minimum pay and conditions.

“Of course there will be an escalation,” he said. “It’s just a formula for disaster and they should not be able to do that in a critical industry.

“We have bargained in good faith. If you go back to the award it’s like them sending a ninja bomb into the Australian waterfront to cut to pieces their own crews. On those tugs, there are three people and they are highly productive.”

He accused the company of “militant brinkmanship which threatens to throw the smooth and efficient operation of almost every Australian seaport into complete chaos”.

Mr Crumlin said Svitzer was “thumbing its nose” at the government and trying to “get in early” before Labor took action.

Mr Albanese referred to recent comments by Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke, who said he was increasingly seeing reports of employers threatening to unilaterally cancel agreements “so that workers at this point in time could be facing an immediate real wage cut”.

“We’ve said repeatedly that the industrial relations system is not working in the interests of business or in the interests of workers,” Mr Albanese said. “We will look to have constructive discussions between both employers and unions around how we can change that.”

Workers at Svitzer’s terminals ranging from Sydney to Melbourne to Fremantle and Cairns will walk out on Friday, with the company telling customers the legal strikes ranging from four-hour to 24-hour stoppages might affect services and operations.

On Monday, the Fair Work Commission will hear Svitzer’s application to terminate the agreement which, if successful, could potentially force 540 workers on to minimum pay and conditions. Svitzer launched the termination application in January, claiming two years of negotiations with three maritime unions involving more than 50 meetings had “come to nothing”.

The company says the existing agreement, which lapsed in 2019, enables restrictive work practices and interference in managerial and operational decision-making. It has said it was not prepared to support a new agreement that “replicates legacy terms which have been agreed more than 22 years ago in a completely different market”.

Members and officials of the MUA, the Australian Institute of Marine & Power Engineers and the Australian Maritime Officers Union will participate in a national briefing with Ms McManus on Friday.

Unions have written to Svitzer, a local subsidiary of one of the world’s largest maritime conglomerates, AP Moller Maersk, asking the company to return to the bargaining table.

Mr Crumlin said AP Moller Maersk’s global leadership should intervene in a situation that is “now completely out of the control of local managers”.

A Svitzer Australia spokeswoman said the company was “very disappointed” with the action considering its impact “on the supply chain and on our customers, ports and the communities we operate in”.

She said the action would disrupt port operations, particularly in Brisbane and Melbourne where the MUA has notified a 24-hour work stoppage.

“Svitzer has been forced to go down the path of EA termination in an attempt to give certainty to our employees, customers and stakeholders,” she said. “Svitzer has committed to maintaining crew salaries and core conditions as part of an undertaking in the termination proceedings but is looking for reasonable productivity improvements.”