Ports of Auckland has twisted the knife in the bitter wharfside dispute, announcing yesterday it has signed up two companies to replace the almost 300 staff it sacked on Monday.
The powerful Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) and Ports of Auckland (POAL) appear to be deadlocked beyond the point of no return and industry sources say it is too late for either to back down.
Court challenges, redundancy bargaining, wharf picketing and potential picket-crossing by redundant staff or new non-union staff will be flashpoints in the weeks ahead.
A support rally in Auckland today has attracted union heads from the United States, Australia, the Netherlands and all New Zealand's unions.
While MUNZ awaits an Employment Court hearing on March 26 about whether POAL can legally sack workers, either in negotiations or when on strike, POAL yesterday announced contracts with Drake New Zealand and AWF Group as "competitive stevedore partners".
MUNZ national president Garry Parsloe claimed to the Otago Daily Times POAL had planned for months to replace the staff, citing a nine-month-old POAL strategy paper.
"You have to bargain in good faith and advertising people's jobs at the same time is not good faith," Mr Parsloe said of POAL job vacancies which appeared in Australian media weeks ago.
When asked if redundancy bargaining would be undertaken in the weeks ahead, he believed the pending Employment Court hearing would find the almost 300 "were not redundant".
The country's transport and port sectors are becoming increasingly nervous over the dispute's escalation, but three Employment Court injunctions covering the ports of Tauranga, Wellington and Lyttelton have clarified secondary industrial action cannot be undertaken by MUNZ members by black-listing non-union-loaded vessels.
The injunctions appear to allay fears of the country's other ports being dragged into the fray.
Industry sources have claimed POAL, which has been losing market share to Tauranga's port for almost a decade, had no choice but to push ahead with the redundancies to enact change.
The forgotten catalyst to the dispute goes back almost three years when four MUNZ members who were between-ports shuttle-truck drivers in Auckland, were offered redundancy and replaced by non-union labour in a POAL subsidiary transport company.
"MUNZ saw this as the thin end of the wedge to the use of non-union labour within the [POAL] gates and dug in," a source said.
In a MUNZ press release yesterday outlining its bargaining position with POAL at the end of last week, rejecting suggestions it quit bargaining, one of the 18 bargaining points addressed the issue of Conlinxx, the container shuttle service.
The statement said: "Conlinxx. We need to find a mutually acceptable way that this matter concerning a company 90% owned by POAL can be addressed in a reasonable timeframe.
"We want to see shuttles fully utilised by our members and we are prepared to use this timeframe to achieve that." Mr Parsloe did not reject the suggestion Conlinxx was the original catalyst.
"Our collective agreement said we had [shuttle] driver coverage; POAL just threw out that document and brought in its own drivers. It wasn't mediation, it was being dictated to," he said.
An industry source said: "Once Maersk moved its services [to port Tauranga], then Fonterra said it wouldn't use Auckland, POAL realised it had lost so much it couldn't back down and has got to go for broke and reorganise its wharves."
A copy of one of three court injunctions obtained by the ODT, notes both MUNZ and POAL had taken industrial action - "a series of lockouts and disputes" - since December.
A Maersk vessel, which had been worked on in Auckland by non-union staff and management arrived at another port, but was picketed by MUNZ outside the gates, and staff were "instructed to commence work but none of them did so", citing health and safety concerns over crossing picket lines.
The port's management claimed the workers were engaged in an "unlawful strike", prompting seeking of the court injunction.
The judge did not believe there were genuine health and safety issues, and the port company had allowed a lengthy stopwork meeting before the ship's arrival as a way of resolution.
He ordered MUNZ and the Rail and Maritime Transport Union "refrain" from directing, encouraging or inducing their respective members to not work on the Maersk vessel "or any other vessel on grounds related to the dispute at the Ports of Auckland".
