MUA to picket Michaelia Cash’s office over Alcoa’s removal of Australian crew on MV Portland

The maritime union will picket the Perth office of Employment Minister Michaelia Cash over the MV Portland dispute.

The MUA will picket the office of Employment Minister Michaelia Cash over Alcoa’s forcible removal of the Australian crew of its MV Portland ship, saying she has “questions to answer”.

The maritime union will picket the Perth office of Employment Minister Michaelia Cash on Monday, protesting Alcoa’s forcible removal of the Australian crew of its MV Portland ship last week.

The Maritime Union of Australia claims Senator Cash has “questions to answer” over the miner’s raid on the ship two months after the union began industrial action over the company’s decision to sack its Australian crew.

MUA Western Australian branch secretary Chris Cain told The Australian the union was evaluating a lawsuit against Alcoa for breaching its “duty of care by sending in security guards to pull workers from their beds at 1am and forcibly remove them from their workplace.”

Bill Shorten branded Aloca’s actions last week “WorkChoices on water”.

But Alcoa argued it took “decisive action ... to end protracted illegal industrial action”, with Australian managing director Michael Parker accusing the MUA of holding “our ship hostage”. He said the situation had gone on “long enough”.

The MUA will begin a 24-hour shut down on Monday of Patrick port terminals in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.

However, it’s understands the union is not expected to picket those sites.

Instead, members will rally outside Senator Cash’s office, to protest Alcoa’s “attack on Australian jobs”.

Alcoa sent private security on board the MV Portland to march the crew — which refused to sail the vessel to Singapore where it would be sold — off the ship in the after-dark raid.

Crew members said they were not given time to collected their possessions, which have not yet been returned.

The union claims Alcoa is switching to foreign vessels to circumvent national cabotage laws, which state that ships trading through domestic ports are to be Australian flagged and crewed.

It says there are no protections against foreign ships using “exploited workers on as little as $2/hr”.

The Coalition’s proposed changes to the laws were voted down in the Senate last year.

Infrastructure Minister Warren Truss granted Alcoa a temporary licence for a foreign vessel to use the route between Western Australia and Portland in Victoria which had been the MV Portland’s for 27 years.

The federal court rejected an MUA’s appeal against the license.

Protestors on Monday will demand to know the government’s knowledge of the raid.

“You can’t just arrive on the scene with a foreign crew to sail a vessel — they need visas and permission to sail so it’s impossible that the Turnbull Government didn’t know,” Mr Cain said.

Women from the MUA plan to present Senator Cash, who is also the Minister for Women with a letter objecting to Alcoa’s actions.

“All of the security guards were male and the MUA is concerned what would happen if there were women working on the vessel,” the union is understood to have written.

“Did the company or the Government check whether there were any women onboard before the raid, what safeguards were put in place to ensure the safety of the crew, and will the minister guarantee this won’t happen again?”