Stevedore Qube is the target of a long-running series of strikes and other industrial actions by a union in pursuit of a near 130% increase above the Stevedoring Award.
That union campaign has been going on for months. Early on in the negotiations, Qube had already offered a very generous 18% pay rise. Turning that down and pursuing a near 130% hike is simply unjustifiable.
But, now, the union has massively escalated its actions: strikes are underway, or are due, at Brisbane, Port Kembla, Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin and Fremantle. A 14-day strike is due at Melbourne. And this follows on from previous months of industrial disruption.
Qube is a vital component in our supply chain. The cargoes and ships it handles are highly specialised. Qube provides high quality handling of family cars, light industrial vehicles, wheeled and tracked vehicles of all kinds (including farming equipment and Defence Force materiel and assets), heavy and odd-shaped machinery for construction, mining, and energy generation, and a wide range of materials for construction (such as large and heavy beams). Regional ports also handle small volumes of containers, which carry everyday goods, such as food, household goods, and other goods, which are destined for Australian families across remote and rural Australia.
Qube ports, and their cargo- and ship-handling services, are vital to the wellbeing of Australia.
Make no mistake, while this industrial action may be slow-moving, and is not as visible to the everyday Australian as other shipping and port sectors, this disruption will surely begin to cripple our economy. Australian families, businesses, and industries will inevitably start to suffer.
We’ve already seen signs of it. We have reports of large ships, full of family cars, bouncing back and forth between the main car import terminals because the ships have difficulty discharging. There are vessels stuck off the Australian coast with no reasonable prospect of getting a berth soon. Cars are being offloaded at the wrong ports and then trucked – at massive cost – across Australia.
This will all have to be paid for and, ultimately, it is ordinary everyday Australians and their families that will pay the cost.
It is time for these strikes to stop.
Shipping Australia has therefore written to Senator the Hon Murray Watt, Federal Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, urging him to intervene using his s.431 Fair Work Act powers which would terminate the strikes and send the dispute to the Fair Work Commission.
State and Territory workplace Ministers have powers under s.424 FWA to send the dispute to the Fair Work Commission for a hearing. Accordingly, we have written to the following workplace Ministers: Jo-Anne Hersey (NT); Simone McGurk (WA); Jarrod Bleijie (QLD); Sophie Cotsis (NSW); Jaclyn Symes (VIC); Attorney General Kyham Maher (SA).
Today, we publicly call on Minister Watt, and also upon all the State and Territory Ministers to act on behalf of everyday Australian families across Australia to bring these damaging strikes to an end.
Commenting on the matter, Captain Melwyn Noronha, CEO of Shipping Australia, said: “Enough is enough. Immediate action is required by our elected officials to show that they care about everyday Australian families. Ministers must act to bring this disruption to an end. If we look at the bigger picture, we can see that this industrial action is part of a systemic problem with the Australian waterfront. In fact, there are a series of massive dockside enterprise bargaining negotiations that are due to occur this year. Our port sector is subject to a near-continuous campaign of paralysing industrial action. Clearly, there needs to be a fundamental root-and-branch reform of industrial relations law & policy if Australia is to remain competitive on the world stage.”
