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Source: Bill Moyers
Source: Chicago Teachers Union
The AutoStrad fleet in Brisbane, introduced in 2005, promised big results. However, target box rates are lower than elsewhere in the country, said Mick Doleman, MUA deputy national secretary. He said, 'The technology Patrick’s is introducing is unproductive and very expensive. This will not lift productivity, and will become a millstone around shareholders’ necks.'The Maritime Union of Australia sees Patrick’s plan as “1998 all over again at Patrick’s Port Botany”.
“Patrick’s management has resorted to its mean and tricky ways of 1998 with today’s shock announcement that it will sack more than half its Port Botany workforce,” the MUA said in a statement, following Patrick parent company Asciano’s announcement that 270 of its 511-strong Port Botany waterfront workforce will be made redundant by mid-2014 and replaced with automated technology.
MUA deputy national secretary Mick Doleman said the move is ideologically motivated and will decimate the workforce, while failing to deliver any benefits for shareholders and clients, and added:
This is an extraordinary sleight of hand tactic by Patrick’s management following a protracted 20-month wage negotiation that...
Source: NYTimes
Source: Bklyn Heights Blog
Source: Baltimore Brew
Excerpts from the Portland Business Journal:
“There are much bigger issues at play, issues that strike at the heart of our collective bargaining agreement,” Leal Sundet, the union’s coast committeeman, said in a news release.
While two jobs are at issue, the longshore union has argued that the larger problem is with ICTSI’s refusal to follow terms of a collective bargaining agreement.
ICTSI, which took control of the Port of Portland’s container business two years ago, became a member of the PMA shortly after signing its lease with the port. The longshoremen have argued that in joining the PMA, ICTSI is required to comply with its labor agreement and award the jobs to their workers.
“The carriers who left Portland did so after demanding that ICTSI hire longshore workers as required by their contract,” Sundet said. “When ICTSI refused to follow the contract, the carriers left and went to terminals that were in compliance.”
Read the rest in the Portland Business Journal
Oregon Public Broadcasting featured ILWU Local 8 member Jim Daw as the first worker to be profiled in their reinstated 'On the Job' series. Daw spoke with OPB at Terminal 5, July 18. In the 10-minute live interview, Daw described his father's experience on the waterfront prior to containerization and the importance of safety on the job.
How to listen and see pics:
Listen to Daw’s interview by clicking here
See OPB’s photo series of Daw here
From the Maritime Union of Australia:
Patrick risks reigniting a bitter industrial dispute on the country’s waterfront after unveiling plans to slash more than half the wharfies employed at its container operations at Sydney’s Port Botany.
The stevedoring business – a division of Australia’s largest listed ports operator, Asciano – will lay off 270 of its 511 workers at the port over two years as computers take over their roles.
The Maritime Union of Australia, which represents the wharfies, accused the company of resorting to the ”mean and tricky ways” employed during the notorious waterfront dispute in 1998, when Patrick sacked its workforce and tried to replace it with non-union labour.
The union said it was considering ”all its options”, including unprotected strike action, in an effort to reverse the decision.
It is just two months since Patrick ended a 20-month long dispute involving about 1200 wharfies that came close to turning into a Qantas-style lockout.
”The ink is not even dry on that document and we find ourselves in a position where half the workforce will have their jobs destroyed,” the union’s Sydney branch secretary, Paul...
PORTLAND, OR (July 19, 2012) – After hearing four hours of testimony today, Judge Michael Simon rejected the bid of ICTSI and the Port of Portland to intervene in the micromanagement of waterfront operations. He rejected three of the four motions in federal court today, saying that claims of low productivity, standing alone, don’t violate the court order, and that there was no proof of intentional efforts to violate the TRO.
“Today’s decisions validate the ILWU’s view that longshoremen are being unfairly blamed for carriers leaving the Port of Portland in recent weeks, when the real offender is Philippines-based ICTSI,” said Leal Sundet, ILWU Coast Committeeman. “We respect the court and Judge Simon, and appreciate that he can see through the distortions of an employer that’s violating its own labor contract and blaming it on the men and women on the docks.”
Judge Simon denied the Pacific Maritime Association’s request to formalize an arbitration, saying he didn’t want to interject the court into the union’s arbitration process, as the grievance machinery has not yet been exhausted. He denied the PMA’s request for a TRO, and further denied a contempt of court...
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