Prospects for smooth operations on the Australian waterfront have taken a stormy turn.
The Maritime Union of Australia has given notice of its intent to take extensive protected industrial action at Patrick Terminals. This coordinated national industrial action was made public earlier today (Friday 28 August).
Bans, bans, bans
The nationwide industrial action includes bans on the performance or work in higher levels, a series of one hour stoppages, four hour stoppages, some eight hour stoppages, a 24 hour stoppage, bans on shift extensions, bans on the working of a specific vessel and bans on the carrying out of work on certain projects.
What is particularly noteworthy is that at each of the Fremantle, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne terminals, the MUA will be operating “a ban on performance of work on vessels that have been subcontracted or outsourced to Patrick by another stevedoring company from … Friday 4 September 2020 for an indefinite period”.
Meanwhile, in Sydney especially, and more generally around the country, a perfect storm of factors including a surge of imported goods, a reduction of storage capacity, bad weather and industrial action has resulted in a build-up of empty containers in the country.
It has become quite a serious situation and this industrial action by the MUA on the waterfront will only serve to exacerbate the backlog of empty containers.
An in-principle agreement
We turn now to a ray of industrial relations hope on the waterfront.
DP World Australia’s enterprise bargaining agreement has two parts – a national part that governs terms and conditions across the country and a site by site part. We understand that the MUA and DP World Australia have agreed “in-principle” on the national part of the enterprise bargaining agreement.
The in-principle agreement is welcome and industry no doubt looks forward to it becoming a final agreement.
In the meantime, there is no agreement in-principle or otherwise on the site-by-site part of DP World Australia’s enterprise bargaining agreement.
