Crew drinks water from Panama Canal

The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) New Zealand exposed maltreatment of the international crew aboard the m/v Wisteria during an inspection at the port of New Plymouth and Napier.

Flying a Panamanian flag of convenience, m/v Wisteria is owned by Korean company, Hanjoo Shipping, working between New Zealand and the US west coast.

Despite threats of dismissal if they talked to the ITF, the crew revealed they had to drink water from the Panama Canal while the captain’s dog drank mineral water.

ITF co-ordinator Kathy Whelan now holds copies of crew members’ employment contracts that specify dismissal if discovered talking to the ITF and the trip home paid for by the crew member.
The crew had a long list of abuse of wages and conditions aboard the m/v Wisteria, including payment of US$340 per month instead of the legal minimum US$977 – one sailor had been earning this rate for 18 months.

The mixed nationality crew was from Korea, Indonesia, and Burma.

The ITF, which had obtained US$20,000 for six Indonesians who were worried their agents would meet them at Jakarta docks and confiscate the money, helped the crew bank the money in New Zealand.

One of the ITF’s first campaigns, which began in 1948, was to destroy flags of convenience in merchant shipping. The campaign continues but has been unsuccessful so far. The ITF estimates that more than one million seafarers now work on ‘flagged out’ ships; in 2002 over half the world’s ships were flagged out, up from one in five in the 1970s.

Flagging out means that the law of the country applies aboard ships registered in that country. For this reason many shipping companies register with governments that have poor labour legislation or poor enforcement of worker-friendly laws. Panama, the Bahamas, and Liberia, are the most commonly used of 28 countries offering to register flags of convenience. Sale of these flags is lucrative, for example Liberia receives US$15-20 million per year.

ITF NZ Media Release, 27 May 2000; Key Events in British Labour History: with observations on Asia, Ed Shepherd, November 2002

Kinleith mill strike ends

After almost three months on strike, 270 workers at the Kinleith pulp and paper mill returned to work in late June. The workers decided to stop work on 7 March in the face of a proposed attempt by the company to unilaterally change working conditions and reduce wages.

The agreement between mill owners Carter Holt Harvey (CHH, owned by the US’s International Paper) and the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) included NZ$1,000 cash, four percent pay rise, with three percent more in 2004. The union agreed to most management demands, including wages restructuring, new working times, and abolishing overtime pay and seniority-based promotion.

World Socialist Web Site, 2 June 2003

Businesses call for re-nationalisation!!

In an apparent about-face, a business group of big freight movers has called on the government to re-nationalise New Zealand’s rail system. The group includes some of NZ’s biggest firms in - Fonterra the dairy giant and Carter Holt Harvey of pulp and paper fame.

NZ Rail was sold off during the years of monetarist governments to a local merchant banker and a US rail corporation. They ‘asset-stripped’ the railways and allowed the system to run down to the extent that trains were de-railing, could not keep to timetable, and workers and the public were being killed at a horrific rate. The main cause of death has been deregulation of road transport, so trucks can now carry freight that previously had to go by rail. Overloaded logging trucks regularly roll over, killing carloads of people. Another cause of death is the lack of barriers and lights at road crossings. One such crossing is close to Westport where a petition and a public meeting failed to get any action from Tranzrail after a woman motorist was killed at a crossing with no warning bells.

The share price fell and fell as investors lost confidence. Unions, many businesses and a large section of the public called on the government to buy back the rail.

Another US operator, RailAmerica, has now offered to buy the railway, but the fear is they will close many lines.

The call for re-nationalisation is from corporations that 10 years ago would certainly have backed the sell-off, which was achieved under the slogan of greater ‘efficiency’ under private ownership.
The term ‘asset-stripping’ above may not be quite correct. It is more a form of legalised banditry where the buyers of NZ Rail made their money from ‘deals’.

Pete Lusk, 19 May 2003