Auckland on the road to resolution?

Facilitator Alastair Dumbleton, chief member of the employment relations authority, was appointed under Section 50A to I of the Employment Relations Act 2000 on 8 May 2012, to help resolve the dispute.

PoAL CEO Tony Gibson says that while the port is not happy with aspects of the package recommended by the facilitator, he was “willing to compromise in order to do a deal.”

He said: “Accepting the recommendations means compromise on both sides. But it also offers significant benefits for the port, port staff, their families, and Auckland as a whole.”

Meanwhile, MUNZ has welcomed the news. National President, Garry Parsloe, said in a statement that the union considers the recommendations to be a useful basis to enter into what it hopes will be a “successful round of negotiations with PoAL.”

Details of the recommendations are still confidential and both sides are refusing to make any further comment on the issue for now.

Picketing started at PoLA in March 2012 after it announced that it would be introducing ‘competitive stevedoring’, or contracting dockwork out, at its Fergusson and Bledisloe container terminal operations.

The eight week consultation process served to employees and the unions at the time – despite four month’s worth of strikes over the proposal to ‘casualise’ the workforce, turned out to be a very bitter pill for the port to swallow in terms of disruption and expense.