As is, by now, well known, the waterfront union has withdrawn its highly damaging and disruptive industrial actions against the stevedore Qube.
Shipping Australia had previously given a variety of media briefings and wrote to State, Territory and Federal politicians urging intervention in the industrial relations campaign. We pointed out that the strikes were damaging to the Australian car trade, to the construction sector, the mining sector, the energy sector, and to regional economies.
After the strikes were withdrawn, we resumed our calls for industrial relations waterfront reforms, which should include
- enterprise bargaining at waterfront-related companies ought to be scheduled on a staggered basis so that industrial action cannot affect all of Australia’s trade at once;
- that should be staggered in time so that multiple companies in the same / related areas are not all disrupted at the same time
- large companies should have localised EBAs that are staggered by geographical location
- there should be shorter, fixed, bargaining periods and, if negotiations run out of time, the whole dispute ought to be automatically referred to the Fair Work Commission for immediate determination and settlement of disputes
- the notice period given before waterfront strike action is too short; it ought to be extended to 21 day. This would cover the 14-ish or so sailing days between south east Asia and Australia, a further six days of cargo staging time (three days either side) and a further one day buffer
- there needs to be much more strict prohibitions on, and enforcement against, any secondary industrial action threatened or taken by the waterfront unions against any third parties that are not part of the dispute.
We consider that these fairly minor reforms would preserve the right and ability of employees to take meaningful action in pursuit of their legitimate EBA goals without unnecessarily, unduly harming the Australian economy.
You can read our original articles by clicking on the links below.
Further reading
- “Shipping Australia urges Federal Workplace Minister, and State & Territory Ministers, to end disruptive waterfront industrial action,” 10 January 2025
- “Protected industrial action against Qube withdrawn; Shipping Australia calls for waterfront industrial relations reforms,” 14 January 2025
