MARITIME UNION OF AUSTRALIA
MEDIA RELEASE
25 NOVEMBER 2024
Qube Ports abuses intractable bargaining laws while making light of DV during EBA negotiations
The MUA has been locked in a stalled bargaining process with a major, ASX listed port operator, Qube Ports, since April 2024. The Union now anticipates that 10 Australian ports will be engaged in industrial action by Christmas time.
MUA officials have repeatedly highlighted the company's dogged efforts to delay or disrupt the orderly process of bargaining. The union sought to bargain as early as October 2023 but Qube refused to come to the table, ignoring requests to get the deal done prior to the expiry of 19 agreements in June 2024.
"Qube has one clear objective here, which is to trigger intractable bargaining provisions within the industrial relations laws, so they can avoid participating in genuine negotiation. Their end goal is to get an arbitrated outcome which they believe will be better than what they can manage with their own negotiators around the bargaining table," said Warren Smith, the Deputy National Secretary of the MUA.
"We are calling on Industrial Relations Minister Murray Watt to remove the ability of employers to game the intractable bargaining laws so companies like Qube can avoid any form of genuine collective bargaining." Mr Smith said.
Not only do Qube try and manipulate the IR laws they have shown consistently how out of touch they are with the community.
The principal claims being made by the Union are for:
- Pay rises that catch up with inflation and protect wharfies' purchasing power on a same job same pay principle.
- Fatigue management rules to prevent the allocation of dangerous work patterns by company managers
- Roster allocations provided by 12pm the day before a shift, instead of the current 4pm allocation
Qube are rejecting all of the workers' core claims.
Stunned Maritime Union of Australia delegates and officials have emerged from a recent bargaining meeting in disbelief at bosses' responses to a list of bargaining claims, including one for Domestic and Family Violence Leave, when Qube's negotiators seemed to joke that "if we give them more of that they'll USE IT".
"This sort of regressive, antisocial and chauvinistic commentary is usually described as belonging to the locker room, but the truth is it seems more at home in the Board Room, where executives and managers think it's funny to make light of the scourge of domestic violence," said Mr Smith.
Wharfies at Qube's bulk and general ports across Australia commenced industrial action in September after negotiations were repeatedly sabotaged by managers at Australia's largest, vertically integrated stevedoring business, Qube.
As a consequence, over ten of these ports will be in industrial action by Christmas time, as wharfies grow impatient with the truculent and obstructive conduct of their bosses at the ASX listed behemoth.
"The managers of this company are burning shareholders' cash on some kind of corporate funeral pyre for themselves and they are burning through the goodwill and patience of their workforce and their customers as well," said Mr Smith.
Australian steel traders have been complaining since October that shipments delayed by industrial action could have been delivered on time had Qube been serious about landing a new deal with wharfies when the old agreement expired in June.
"At every turn, the company has sought to drag this process out longer and longer. These chancers are just the latest maritime employers to roll the dice on an intractable bargaining strategy like with Svitzer Tugs and DP World stevedores. The Government needs to stop the rorting of intractable bargaining laws which are impacting the livelihoods of Australian workers," said Mr Smith.
The company is guilty of rampant corporate profiteering during and since COVID with a 148% increase in profits during the last four year employment agreement.
Over the same period, the real value of wages paid to Qube wharfies has been smashed by 14% by the same inflation that has been caused by price gouging led by major Australian corporations like Qube.
