With all the public focus on the container terminals there is another disgraceful action by Maritime Union of Australia henchmen that has gone virtually unnoticed.
A campaign of targeted intimidation and harassment by the Maritime Union of Australia has caused mooring services company Ports & Harbour Services Pty Ltd (P&HS) to suspend operations.
In a statement headed “Temporary service pause,” the company said: “as you are all aware our new lines service commenced operations last Monday 21 Sept 2020. We were immediately subjected to a series of pickets by the MUA and its members. In the face of pickets we are unable to guarantee safety to our workers and as a result we cannot provide a service to shipping. For this reason, we are looking at a temporary pause in the service.”
Union bullies and thugs have been serially intimidating the non-unionised workers. They have been chasing the company boats on the harbour – it was only the intervention of the police that kept the union members from the company boats. MUA verbally abused both the police and the company workers.
They have chased workers in the street and on the water in boats and on jet-skis. There has been physical intimidation and online vilification. They have threated workers with lynching and posted intimations of violence such as a cartoon in which a man who is wearing an MUA cap aims a shotgun with the words “SCAB” and “HUNTER” in the barrel of a shotgun. The point of view is designed so that the viewer of the cartoon is staring into the barrel of the gun.
This intimidation and behaviour is clearly illegal and so threatening that the NSW Police were drawn in to protect the P&HS workers.
Commenting on the abuse and intimidation, Shipping Australia CEO Rod Nairn said: “I reserve my strongest condemnation for the MUA’s ruthless intimidation tactics and their mindless followers who seem to be frightened of the consequence of honest workers doing a proper job for an honest wage and will go to any lengths to stop them”.
Shipping Australia calls upon the union leadership, particularly Paddy Crumlin who heads up both the MUA and the International Transport Federation, to condemn this campaign of intimidation and insist his members comply with the law.
These blatant acts of abuse and intimidation are clear breaches of criminal, workplace health and safety, and employment laws. It is time that the union and the individuals are held to account.
Noting that the MUA has a history of engaging in such tactics, Shipping Australia also calls upon the Federal Government to act on industrial relations reforms that will strengthen the ability to prevent harassment and intimidation of workers.
