Written By:
IrishBill -
Date published: 7:57 am, August 17th, 2012 -
1 comment
Categories: accountability
Tags: darien fenton
Darien Fenton’s port transparency bill has been drawn and may well pass.
Good. The PoAL dispute has shown just how much this is needed.
Written By:
Bunji -
Date published: 12:34 pm, July 5th, 2012 -
28 comments
Categories: dpf, Media, national
Tags:
The media have generally just regurgitated David Farrar’s angled statistics, stories and lines. Now we finally see a story that looks behind: this is a blog from one of the National Party elite, so why is he running a story on Police pay? Are National looking to move on this?
Written By:
Eddie -
Date published: 7:21 am, May 22nd, 2012 -
38 comments
Categories: capitalism, class war, Unions, workers' rights
Tags: AFFCO, meatworkers union, talleys
News in that Talley’s/AFFCO and the Meatworkers reached an agreement at 5am this morning. The workers will keep their wage and job security provisions and still be covered by a collective. The workers have displayed incredible strength with support from up and down the country. Next time, bosses will think twice before attacking their workers.
Written By:
James Henderson -
Date published: 9:48 am, May 15th, 2012 -
10 comments
Categories: workers' rights
Tags:
Sometimes during union bargaining that has hit a wall, workers will vote to ‘work to rule’ – ie not do extras beyond the terms of you contract. It’s perfectly legal. In fact, it should be what we all do every day. Working beyond rule is gifting time and effort to the boss for no compensation. But National wants employers to be able to cut your pay for doing your job.
Written By:
IrishBill -
Date published: 7:35 am, May 11th, 2012 -
54 comments
Categories: class war, Unions, workers' rights
Tags: tau henare
The tories are all puffed up about finally getting their secret ballot law passed. It’s about freedom they say, they’re on the side of the working man.
Thing is it’s not. And they most certainly aren’t.
Written By:
Eddie -
Date published: 9:05 am, April 13th, 2012 -
40 comments
Categories: capitalism, class war, national, workers' rights
Tags: cameron slater, maritime union, meatworkers union, National's civil war, ports of auckland, simon lusk, talleys, useful idiots
It was a bad day yesterday for the ‘heavy hitters’ of the Collins faction, Slater and Lusk. First, Ports of Auckland admitted supplying them with a workers’ private details. Then, the smear on the Meatworkers that they had orchestrated with Talley’s was shot down by the SFO in record time. Finally, Michelle Boag gave them a public serve on RNZ, fueling civil war talk.
Written By:
Eddie -
Date published: 7:08 am, April 12th, 2012 -
170 comments
Categories: Unions
Tags: cameron slater, simon lusk, smears, talleys, useful idiots, useless fucks
Slater/Lusk have been running a series of posts on the finances of the unions. Pretty weak stuff. All Slater/Lusk have proven is that they don’t understand the corporate structure of unions, they can’t read accounts, and they can’t do research. Still, you knew they were seeding something. And then came the Talleys’ complaint to the SFO about the Meatworkers’ Union.
Written By:
IrishBill -
Date published: 3:22 pm, April 1st, 2012 -
33 comments
Categories: class war
Tags: AFFCO, lockout
While the PoAL dispute has been raging a thousand meatworkers are entering their fifth week of lockout at Talleys-owned AFFCO.
There’s a war on workers on across the country at the moment but you can help fight back.
Written By:
Guest post -
Date published: 9:03 am, April 1st, 2012 -
28 comments
Categories: business, capitalism, class war, Unions
Tags: maritime union, ports of auckland
Once upon a time, decades ago now, ports were run by a person called the Harbourmaster. He used to be a highly qualified and experienced Master Mariner, who had extensive knowledge of shipping and decades of experience, at sea and within the port. All this competence and experience came at a wage, at most, five times the average wage.
Written By:
James Henderson -
Date published: 9:54 am, March 31st, 2012 -
50 comments
Categories: business, Unions, workers' rights
Tags: len brown, maritime union, ports of auckland
The PoAL management looks as incompetent and divided as the Nats after their ‘bullet-proof’ contracting out plans were shot down by the Employment Court and a director resigned publicly admonishment management’s strategy. Time to use that bully pulpit, Len. Say you have no confidence in Pearson and Gibson, demand they drop their plans, and get the port back to work.
Written By:
notices and features -
Date published: 11:03 am, March 29th, 2012 -
9 comments
Categories: accountability, auckland supercity, business, transport
Tags: auckland, costs, negligence, ports of auckland
Apparently the Auckland Council doesn’t know how much the POAL fiasco is costing. Rough estimates suggest that the cost is at least $400,000 a day, probably significantly more. No wonder the Council doesn’t want to know.
Written By:
Eddie -
Date published: 12:54 pm, March 23rd, 2012 -
5 comments
Categories: class war, wages
Tags: editing the herald, ports of auckland
The Herald editorial says many “saw a more efficient and more flexible port emerging from” contracting out at PoAL. This is an oft-spouted fundamental misunderstanding of what is happening. Contracting out would not reduce time or cost to move freight. It would just reduce the downtime the port pays for amounting to a simple transfer of wealth from wages to profits.
Written By:
Anthony R0bins -
Date published: 9:15 am, March 17th, 2012 -
97 comments
Categories: capitalism, class war, jobs, Unions, workers' rights
Tags: munz, ports of auckland
Ports of Auckland management may be starting to realise that they have bitten off more than they can chew. Faced with international union action, they have called a halt to the redundancy process.
Written By:
IrishBill -
Date published: 7:27 am, March 15th, 2012 -
32 comments
Categories: workers' rights
Tags: cameron slater, ports of auckland, richard pearson
It’s a bit rich that PoAL are claiming they’re “investigating” online privacy breaches now when it’s obvious they’ve been colluding with Cameron Slater for months.
It’s also interesting that the limited “no comment” comment PoAL has issued has been in Tony Gibson’s name rather than Richard Pearson’s.
Written By:
IrishBill -
Date published: 6:51 am, March 14th, 2012 -
168 comments
Categories: capitalism
Tags: cameron slater, ports of auckland, richard pearson
Looks like Ports of Auckland have been unlawfully passing workers’ private information to Cameron Slater.
It’s just another example of the intimidation and thuggery the port management is becoming well known for.
Written By:
IrishBill -
Date published: 1:17 pm, March 11th, 2012 -
83 comments
Categories: business, class war
Tags:
POAL is on the backfoot industrially, legally, and in terms of public relations.
God only knows what kind of hubris made Gibson and his board think they could get away with attacking their workers like this.
It seems that no matter how many times these corporate ratbags get their arses handed to them by union members they just don’t seem to learn.
Written By:
the sprout -
Date published: 9:15 am, March 10th, 2012 -
136 comments
Categories: uncategorized
Tags:
Josie Pagani has this to say about casualisation and the POAL dispute: On Sean Plunket’s ZB show today. Talking about the ports. ‘Casualisation’ scares us because it sounds like short hand for bad hours, low pay and no annual leave. It sounds like life in the early industrial revolution pre-unions. In some jobs it is. The […]
Written By:
Zetetic -
Date published: 5:59 pm, January 24th, 2012 -
138 comments
Categories: class war
Tags: cameron slater, david farrar, ports of auckland
Farrar, Slater and their POAL masters are getting all antsy about how much port workers get paid.
Maybe it’s time they came clean about their own rorting, eh?
Written By:
notices and features -
Date published: 7:24 am, January 18th, 2012 -
6 comments
Categories: auckland supercity, jobs, local government, privatisation, workers' rights
Tags: ports of auckland
The travesty of the Port of Auckland dispute is that we have a publicly-owned company trying to slash its workers’ pay so that it can try to undercut another majority publicly owned company that has already slashed wages, the only winners being the foreign shipping lines. Well, here’s some of our representatives standing up for Auckland workers.
Written By:
notices and features -
Date published: 11:50 am, January 15th, 2012 -
157 comments
Categories: class war, wages, workers' rights
Tags:
The Port of Auckland and its National Party allies would have you believe that the stevedores are monsters for not be willing to accept a 20% pay cut so that POA can try to undercut Port of Tauranga (where’s the ‘national interest’ in that, again?). But, let’s hear from these workers, and their families, as they struggle to protect their livelihood.
Written By:
James Henderson -
Date published: 7:03 am, January 13th, 2012 -
264 comments
Categories: business, employment, Unions, wages, workers' rights
Tags: maritime union, ports of auckland
A leaked Ports of Auckland strategy document shows their goal is to reduce the stevedores’ wages by 20%. They were planning to manufacture a crisis even before the stevedores’ collective expired. They’ve been rumbled breaking the law by not bargaining in good faith. Their political support will now evaporate. They should cut their losses, and a deal with the workers, now.
Written By:
James Henderson -
Date published: 1:18 pm, January 12th, 2012 -
74 comments
Categories: workers' rights
Tags: ports of auckland
National high flyer Jami-Lee Ross, Ports of Auckland’s chief shill, and Fran O’Sullivan all joined the fray over the port dispute yesterday. How does their line that the workers are overpaid marry with the Port’s claim that they’re offering pay rises? Does the Port project its wage bill would rise or fall if its offer were to be accepted? And what to make of this ‘national interest’ line?
Written By:
lprent -
Date published: 9:05 pm, January 11th, 2012 -
137 comments
Categories: Economy, Unions, wages
Tags:
There has been some interesting material floating around in comments and on facebook about the Ports of Auckland waterside disputing workers wages. Looks like we are starting to get some more information outside of the right wing nut job sites. Ultimately the information has to be provided by the Ports of Auckland because they are the only organisation that holds the wages data across employees. But the figures provided by the P0A (the 91k) include overtime payments, shift payments, superannuation subsidies, medical insurance subsidies and hardly constitute a normal wage that the employee would see..
Written By:
James Henderson -
Date published: 8:03 am, January 10th, 2012 -
256 comments
Categories: capitalism, class war, employment, workers' rights
Tags: ports of auckland
Since my post yesterday, Ports of Auckland has upped the ante threatening to sack all its workers and contract out (to quick and loud cheers from the National-aligned blogs they are working with – Cameron Slater’s rate is $10,000 for an operation like this). What they’re proposing is a breach of the law and wouldn’t work, but its just setting the scene for the next stage.
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