Len Brown and the Port of Auckland

[TheLiberalLeft]

This current situation must be a conundrum for Len Brown. Left-wing Labourite supporting the workers' rights or capitalist owner of the Port company.

Take your pick, Len. Stop hiding behind "doing what's best for Auckland". By sitting on the fence, you're not doing what's best for Auckland at all.

[NovInvestor]

No. 1 rule in politics.

never make enemies, especially if they are a member of public.

[TheLiberalLeft]

By sitting on the fence he's making an enemy of me, and I'm a mbr of public.

[NovInvestor]

By sitting on the fence he's making an enemy of me, and I'm a mbr of public.

I guess by sitting on the sideline, he makes less enermy compared to picking a side...

[Ivan McIntosh]

The base that got him elected would usually be on the workers side.

The workers have received less sympathy than most because they are relatively generously paid.

I reckon that might change now that they are losing their jobs. A lot of people will have suffered that kind of profit-inspired shafting.

[Perry]

Change is painful. Matters not if it's employer or
employee. Lack of foresight makes it worse. Isn't
one reason we have containers that NZ & USA
wharfies insatiable greed grew to be intolerable?

[Ivan McIntosh]

Dunno.

I will say, though, that the wharfies weren't requiring more from the employer. They were just trying to keep what they had, ultimately in King Canute fashion.

Unfortunately, port workers elsewhere in NZ have by one means or another been broken in terms of employer requirements to work on notice with no fixed hours, so Auckland isn't competitive (or, at least, that is one reason for it). Ports of Auckland can't make the other ports give their workers a "fair" deal back, so what else can they do? Impose changes taking the workers back towards (not "to", just "towards") the Victorian era, or perish. Not much of a choice.

A lot of union struggle over many many decades went into securing fixed hours that allowed people to plan both their financial and social spheres. All that is gone.

Smart employers these days don't employ anyone in the low skilled area, eg storemen and packers. The employment contract gets signed with a temp agency, not the "employer". The workers go in every day - or not - as the company requires. When the "employer" doesn't want them any more, it just tells the temp agency and problem solved. Great for the company, but disastrous for anyone seeking to earn a living wage and/or support a family. No security whatsoever.

[eri]

like the qantas struggle

even trying to lock in conditions and jobs is becoming difficult in a globalised world

should australians be forced to pay more for airline seats to keep qantas alive

should nz'ers be froced to pay more for imported goods to keep wharfies overpaid for their skill levels...

[Maccachic]

Isn't it Auckland tax payers who will pay more to keep the port running? I was of the impression that Tauranga is the only Port in NZ that doesnt require funding from its council.

[flyernzl]

What Len Brown and John Key are doing is Management 101.

If you own a business and appoint someone to run it, you have two choices.

Either you say to that person 'Run the business to make money'. You have, at that point, passed control over to them. Your function then is merely to sit back, let them manage the thing, and bank the profits.

Or you can say something like 'Make sure you are a generous employer, hire ethnic minorities, buy your supplies only from that particular source and employ lots of people' then you are creating a social welfare organization that will run at a loss. You must then fund those losses (from the ratepayer/taxpayer?), try and charge higher prices than the market will bear (so you then have to create legislation outlawing competition) and otherwise micromanage the thing. Think of the NZ Government Railways of years ago, men leaning on shovels and laws that said you could not send any freight by road over 50 miles.

Any management text book will lay out these options in this sort of situation.

[Meehole]

How peculiar is it that my son who works at the Ports in an admin role learned to drive the straddles just recently and then managed to have a greater output per day than the stevedores that had been doing the job for decades??
How peculiar is it that they can work an 8 hour day and not finish their tasks and their overtime whether it be 1 hour or 2 is paid at a rate of another 8 hours??
How peculiar is it that one of the whingers on the ad on tv has now contracted out and currently in Oz awaiting his payout??
How peculiar that the public are not properly informed on the real goings on??
That's probably why Len won't get involved, he knows what is really going on.

[muppet]

According to Mike Hoskings this morning
the average wharfie
makes $91000 per year and
usually works 26 hours for a rostered 40 hour week.

[jimO]

According to Mike Hoskings this morning
the average wharfie
makes $91000 per year and
usually works 26 hours for a rostered 40 hour week.

no wonder they want more money who could survive on that

[TheLiberalLeft]

At this stage, I'm not sure they want more money.

[Meehole]

At this stage, I'm not sure they want more money.

No but they don't want to get paid for the hours they work either. 26 hours = $91k now, 26 hours = $59k going forward.