AT a time when the national economy is reliant on the resource industry to underpin growth and key assumptions of the Federal Budget, resource industry employer group AREEA, is encouraging the Government and Fair Work Australia to take into consideration the substantial economic impacts of a series of rolling industrial disruptions affecting the nation’s waterfront.
Steve Knott, Chief Executive of AREEA, said the highly disruptive tactics being employed by the Maritime Union of Australia were bound to have a detrimental ripple effect on other sectors of the economy.
“As the MUA holds our ports to ransom in pursuit of increases in pay and allowances of over $30,000 per employee, thousands of other businesses are being made to wear the costs,” Mr Knott said.
“In addition to the truck drivers sitting at ports across the nation waiting for containers to be unloaded, vital supplies needed by the resource industry are now being held up.
“Vitally needed machinery parts and transport equipment essential to the resource industry’s day-to-day operations are now sitting in ships off-shore or being handled at a snail’s pace.
“If such a situation is allowed to continue then the back-log it will create will generate even more difficulty for the sector.
“It took decades of economic reforms under the Keating and Howard Government’s for international investors to overcome their perception the Australian waterfront was no longer strike prone.
“Each and every day the MUA continues with this activity is another day Australia’s international reputation takes a further battering.
“I would strongly encourage the Government and Fair Work Australia to take such economic considerations into account and determine if this dispute, left to its own devices, is really in the national best interest,” Mr Knott said.
ENDS