Tuesday 3 January 2012

Port of Auckland Dispute

It is never nice when the boss and the staff are at war. Everybody loses out especially when you go on strike. But sometimes strikes and lockouts no mater how un-desirable are required.

The Port of Auckland is losing out every day this strike goes on. The offers they are making are very generous. But their problem is the Port's poor productivity and the port knows this. Something has to give.

If I were the port this is what I would do.

Tell them that in 14 days time all staff will be locked out forever.

The new offer would be terms and conditions which would make the Port more productive. It would completely ignore the current terms and conditions on the table or the current contract. Grandfather in all non-union staff and non striking staff as a good will gesture to loyal employees.

Then start taking CVs for the new positions. In addition hand out redundancy payments to the staff members who will not be required due to the losses of current contracts.

This will force the union back to the table, either they keep their jobs or find other jobs. If they do not do a deal then then the port will just send out redundancy cheques in the mail or leave them to stew on lockout (since it is cheaper to employ a previous employee rather than a new employee).

There are those who may ask will this kill the buisness. In the short term it could. But the rewards are very good, you get improved productivity and cheaper costs. New Zealand is too far away from the rest of the world to have pricey ports.

To finish I want to quote the following from CEO Tony Gibson:

Labour utilisation here is about 65 per cent compared to more than 80 per cent at Port of Tauranga, meaning that for every 40 hours a stevedore is paid, they can work as little as 26 (and let's remember that average remuneration for a fulltime stevedore is $91,000)


 This dispute can not go on it must end, New Zealand needs productive low cost ports. We are too far away from the rest of the world to have expensive ports.

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