ILWU shows solidarity with MUNZ in New Zealand, March 2012. Photo by Melvin MacKay, ILWU Local 10.
Efforts to recruit a replacement workforce for Auckland’s strike-ridden port have been delayed for at least two more days by a legal challenge from the Maritime Union.
So have other moves by the council-owned port company to make 235 striking union members redundant, to be replaced by employees of up to three new stevedoring operators.
A “judicial settlement conference” held in private before the Employment Court yesterday ended with an agreement by Ports of Auckland to extend until Thursday a commitment it made last week to Judge Barrie Travis not to hire new workers in the meantime.
Visitors to the picket have included members of Canterbury Bulldogs rugby league side from Sydney, Anglican Maori Bishop Muru Walters and stevedoring unionists from the United States and Australia.