By CHRIS DANIELS and ALISON HORWOOD
Tony Baas' phone hasn't done a lot of ringing this month. And for the casual wharf hand at Stevedoring Services (Nelson), no phone call means no money.
Mr Baas says that since Carter Holt Harvey (CHH) took its Port of Nelson log-loading contract from Stevedoring Services and gave it to Mainland Stevedoring three weeks ago, he and about 30 other casuals have lost about $1000 each in gross income.
Like hundreds of others, Mr Baas joined the 48-hours of rowdy picket line protests this week at the Port of Nelson. They capped a bitter three-month dispute between the Waterfront Workers Union, CHH and Mainland over casualisation and Mainland's practice of using predominantly North Island workers on South Island wharves.
A breakthrough may be imminent, as all three parties have agreed in principle to the involvement of a mediator from the Department of Labour. But there is a yawning gap between the positions of those involved.
From where CHH chief executive Chris Liddell sits in his Auckland office, the issue is clear-cut.
The company has made a legitimate and fair business decision to use Mainland Stevedoring to load its logs bound for the Asian market.
But the view from Trevor Hanson's Wellington office is very different. As general secretary of the Waterfront Workers Union, he sees the South Island log dispute as a clear fight between the workers of New Zealand and big business.
And in that fight so far Mr Baas is one of the biggest losers.
This week, for instance, he and most of the other casuals at Stevedoring Services got only six hours' work because Mainland workers spent two days loading timber. For a wharf hand (not driving a forklift) on $13.80 an hour that's a gross income for the week of a little over $80.
"I am not going to starve to death, but I can tell you right now that for the last few weeks I have been living hand-to-mouth," he says.
For Mr Baas and many of his workmates also working as casuals, survival means being on the dole. That is how they pay the rent or the mortgage, and hopefully there is something left over to put food on the table. They are allowed to earn up to $80 gross a week before their benefit entitlement and anything over that is taxed at 70 per cent.
As a veteran wharfie of almost 13 years, he says he is used to a fluctuating income. But in the past the work was fairly regular and he says things have never been this bad.
And Mr Baas considers himself one of the lucky ones. His children have left home and his partner earns decent money.
"It's hard for us because the permanents get the first work and if there's any left over we get it. At the moment there just doesn't seem to be any left over. Some of the guys are really struggling. They have children who need to be feed and some of the guys are living in motor camps to make ends meet."
Phil Cornwall is a bit better off. As one of about a dozen permanent full-time Stevedoring Services workers and a veteran of 17 years, he is guaranteed a minimum of 40 hours' work a week.
A further 15 wharfies are on the B-register and are guaranteed 20 hours a week.
Although Nelson-based Mr Cornwall hasn't lost much work because of Mainland, he had other reasons to take up his placard and join the rowdy pickets this week.
As one of a few permanent full-timers, he is one of the most expensive employees for Stevedoring Services. If it cut staff because of Mainland's competitive rates, he would be the first to go, he says. And because there is no redundancy clause in his contract, getting rid of him would be easy.
"If CHH get what they want, and that seems to be total casualisation, they put pressure on our company. What they are doing is driving down our wages and conditions.
"They could dump me easily and it wouldn't cost them a thing."
Mr Cornwall says he was alongside firemen, nurses and teachers who had joined the protests this week because, like the wharfies, they fear casualisation.
Mr Cornwall says many Nelson stevedores pride themselves on working at one of the most efficient ports in the country and believe that the Mainland work has not been up to their quality and safety standards.
The Nelson stevedores claim that ships have been seen leaving the ports with logs overhanging the edge. They say Mainland workers often do a 12-hour shift, but get only two 30-minute breaks. Stevedoring Services' staff get three, which most workers say is essential when they do heavy work for long hours.
Also, Mainland has apparently done away with hatchmen, who some wharfies claim are essential for directing the crane and overseeing the safety of the operation.
But Mr Liddell at CHH says Mainland won the tender because it loaded logs better - it stacks them tighter, meaning more wood on each ship.
The work was put out for tender and Mainland won it.
Mr Liddell says the company does not care what union the workers loading the logs are members of.
Whatever Mainland does in the South Island, whether it hires casuals or permanents, one basic fact remains - the logs have to go across wharves. And the wharves they go across will always be Nelson, Lyttelton, Timaru, Port Chalmers and Bluff.
"This is not a dispute about casualisation or local jobs for local people - Mainland employ permanent staff, have recruited local staff and are offering to employ more. It is about a union trying to resist new economy change and protect a monopoly," Mr Liddell says.
He has been called by investors and customers from around the world, asking him what is happening on the South Island wharves.
"At a time when New Zealand is trying to grow exports and rebuild confidence in the face of a slowing world economy this is publicity we do not need."
There have been charges that the recent scenes of pickets and police officers on the wharves are evidence of a return to the bad old days of industrial chaos. But there are marked differences between the old disputes and this one. There are no non-union workers breaking picket lines. No one has been made redundant.
The Mainland Stevedoring workers are union members but they are not part of the Waterfront Workers Union. They have their own union, the Amalgamated Stevedores, set up and formally registered last year.
The Waterfront Workers Union, which has a membership of 1000, says the new union, which claims around 100 members, has been set up by management as a front.
It says the multinational CHH is trying to shake up every South Island port and destroy conditions for thousands of workers.
With millions more logs ready to be cut down and exported in the next few years, the waterfront union claims CHH has engineered a showdown with it in an attempt to have a pool of casual wharfies, on call, expected to turn up for scraps of work.
The union is "drawing a line in the sand," says Mr Hanson, not just for the wharfies but for the 350,000 New Zealanders already being forced into casual work.
It says workers face a loss of employment, simply because CHH wants to make more money.
Mainland is flying in workers to the South Island ports from Tauranga then putting them up in hotels, which must be more expensive than hiring locals. This very fact shows CHH's long-term agenda, says Mr Hanson - forcing a pool of casual workers to compete for work on South Island wharves.
There are many different agendas at work in this dispute, not all of them stated in the battle for positive publicity.
Both sides are claiming the moral high ground. CHH says it has done nothing wrong, it simply hired the best company for the job.
The waterfront workers say their pickets are an attempt to stop an insidious development sweeping across the entire industrial relations landscape - casualisation.
Mediation may solve the immediate dispute. It will not resolve the underlying argument.
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