PoA halts redundancies

Written By: - Date published: 9:56 pm, March 21st, 2012 - 12 comments
Categories: workers' rights - Tags:

It’s back to the bargaining table for Ports of Auckland and the Maritime Union. Redundancies are on hold. The court minute is here. portcourt.

12 comments on “PoA halts redundancies ”

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  1. mickysavage 1
    21 March 2012 at 10:39 pm

    I see John Haigh QC was counsel for POAL.  His father Frank Haigh, a renowned lawyer, c0mmunist and friend of the trade union movement and the working class will be spinning in his grave …

    • Colonial Viper 1.1
      21 March 2012 at 10:44 pm

      It’s a problem. What more can I say.

    • Uturn 1.2
      22 March 2012 at 7:06 am

      The POA industrial dispute winds me up, seriously winds me up, it winds me up so badly I have to stop myself getting updates on it – so I can appreciate your annoyance, too. But one of the few good points of our system is that a party can obtain an official legal voice, whatever their view. Even with the idea of a rich man being able to afford “better lawyers” and gaming the system, I’d rather the risk of that, than have a new system that is held back by examining and articulating it’s position. I’d rather we had physical violence, applied unofficially and covertly condoned, than corrupt otherwise sound legal frameworks. What POAL is trying to do can be proven to be immoral, corrupt and against he interests of the people, but it cannot be shown to be so in a one-way dialogue of accusation – with no right of reply for the accused.

    • Tiger Mountain 1.3
      22 March 2012 at 8:01 am

      @MS: Yes, John Haigh moved away from often working on union cases in the 80s to gun for hire and now increasingly represents Police, bent police and anyone else, like a lot of lawyers. But less than impressive in his case given the family legacy.

      Qualities like loyalty are what will help MUNZ survive this dispute.

    • Huginn 1.4
      22 March 2012 at 12:12 pm

      oh, come off it!

      More likely he’d be saying that if the PoAL had listened to their lawyers instead of their PR people then they wouldn’t have got into this mess.

  2. Jenny 2
    21 March 2012 at 11:56 pm

    The Maritime Workers Union have announced the end of their strike and an immediate return to work.

    This sudden turn of events seems to have caught the Ports of Auckland Management on the hop.

    The rumour is that POAL are having discussions amongst themselves on whether to lock out the returning unionists.

    My feeling is that they would be ill advised to go down this path as the backlash for such an action from the public and the greater union movement might be more than they could handle.

    • Grumpy 2.1
      22 March 2012 at 7:27 am

      Looks like item 4 didn’t last long………

    • Rob 2.2
      22 March 2012 at 9:38 am

      Jenny, outside the immediate circle, the public are well and truly over this. The wider Auckland business community certainly is. The big fight might still be on-going and that is the focus here, but the rest of the business community have had to get on. All our imported and exported freight now is re-dierected, some of it permantly through out sourced cross dock facilities which is what we should have done years ago.

      These guys can keep picking over the bones, but if anyone thinks its going to be back to where it was 3 years ago, the are kidding themselves.

      • IrishBill 2.2.1
        22 March 2012 at 10:35 am

        Nothing to see here, eh? You can do better than that, Rob.

        • Rob 2.2.1.1
          22 March 2012 at 12:10 pm

          Well obviously plenty to see for yourself and for the people on both sides activley in on the action. For the rest of us we have had to get on with it and what it has proven is that there are other options that are viable. Whats important for us is to keep our business going and our people employed.

      • Jenny 2.2.2
        23 March 2012 at 8:03 am

        Rob I surmise from your comments that you are a small business man just trying to continue business as usual.

        In normal circumstances this would be commendable.

        But sometimes BAU is not enough, the very fact that you take time off to comment in this forum, suggests that you understand this, and are fishing around for different answers.

        Keep it up.

        Sometimes BAU becomes a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

  3. Tom Gould 3
    22 March 2012 at 9:23 am

    And this morning the dropkick POAL chair is spinning that contracting is still ‘on’ and that this ‘route deviation’ is a win for them. Good faith? What a bunch of idiots. Sure, their PR people have given terrible advice, but these fools took it.