Break bulk shipping to / from Australia is facing a very rough Christmas and New Year after the CFMEU handed out notice of two weeks’ worth of industrial action at Port Kembla (20 December to 3rd January), Fremantle (23 December to 30 December) and Melbourne (23 December to 3rd January).
It’s pretty extensive stuff, the details of which are listed by Gulf Agency Company it its “Hot Port News” bulletin.
And it is hot port news.
GAC adds that industrial action has also been announced in Adelaide, Brisbane, and Darwin too.
Industrial action includes eight hour stoppages, consecutive eight hour stoppages (leading, in some case to 32-hour stoppages) only eight hour shifts, no shift extensions, ban on shift pre-starts, fixed start times, no variations to start times and more.
For the details of the action, readers are directed to GAC’s Hot Port News.
Let there be no misunderstanding here. Although these strikes don’t attract the same level of interest as strikes on the containerised waterfront, these strikes are potentially highly damaging to Australia’s economic interests.
Many of these ports handle high volumes of vehicular traffic. That’s family cars to you and me. But it’s also wheeled equipment and farm machinery too.
Do not be at all surprised if, at some point in the first half of next year, you find that wait times to buy new family cars suddenly stretch out. There could well be a delay – this kind of shipping trade reacts a bit more slowly to disruption than container shipping (there’s just a lot less of it) before there is a blow-out in lead times, but if this size of industrial strike continues then it is surely coming, sooner or later.
These ports are also break bulk ports which means that they handle break bulk cargo. Break bulk is typically cargo that is oddly shaped, big, or heavy, or all three. Think, for example, tunnel boring machines and all manner of other large pieces of equipment. Think also of windmill blades.
One of the real worries is the problems it will cause to major infrastructure construction projects of all kinds around the country. The cascading consequences and disruption to such projects can be severe and the costs just massively blow out everywhere.
Strikes of this magnitude at our break bulk and our vehicular ports is a very serious economic development. And potentially could become extremely serious.
Shipping Australia continues to brief governments on these developments.
