Shipping Australia notes the ongoing industrial relations difficulties on the Australian waterfront.
With 1-in-5 jobs supported by global trade, over 99.9% of all physical goods and commodities moved by sea, and just under 46% of our GDP dependent on international trade, continued smooth operations on the waterfront are vital to the economic wellbeing of all Australians, no matter how far they live from the sea.
Svitzer Australia has been bargaining with the maritime unions for over three years, since the last enterprise agreement expired in 2019. We understand that there has been an exhaustive bargaining process with, literally, over 1,100 instances of protected industrial action. Such a lengthy period of frequent and protected industrial action is disrupting the towage company’s ability to serve its shipping customers.
We understand from our shipping company members that ships are being delayed and that there is likely to be further delay to a wide variety of shipping services in the immediate and ongoing future.
Commodities that will likely be disrupted include coal, iron ore, grains, fertiliser, other agricultural products, fuel and more. Bear in mind that Australia supplies grain, iron ore and coal on a planetary scale.
Meanwhile, vehicle imports will be disrupted – that means imports of cars, trucks, wheeled mining equipment, wheeled farming machinery (tractors and the like), and building construction machinery will be disrupted. An upset to the import of wheeled farming machinery has a range of cascading effects both on-farm and also in the second-hand machinery markets. Find out more here.
Our major container ports, which import / export general cargo, will be adversely affected. General cargo basically translates into goods that are available on the shelves of the supermarkets and on the shelves of other shops too.
Inevitably, there will be adverse flow-on effects to the land-side logistics industries, to importers, to exporters such as our farmers, and to the retailers of food, household goods, and other goods, who basically sell everything that Australian families might need to buy.
Shipping Australia supports Svitzer Australia in its attempts to reach an equitable enterprise bargain that protects the vital flow of trade into our country, while boosting waterfront competitiveness.
We hope that this dispute can reach a fair, equitable, and just resolution in short order as the ongoing protected industrial action, and the lockout with which the company has been forced to respond, can only cause harm to the supply chain, to the economy, and, ultimately, to Australian families.
