SHIPPING movements in the Port of Newcastle will be severely hampered on Tuesday because of national industrial action by tug-boat engineers.
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The engineers are employed by Svitzer, which operates all of Newcastle’s tugs, and are members of the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers AIMPE).
The union is striking for 12 hours from 4am on Tuesday in Newcastle, Sydney/Port Botany and Geelong, with corresponding action on Wednesday in Melbourne and Brisbane.
AIMPE federal secretary Martin Byrne said on Monday that Svitzer wanted deckhands, skippers and engineers all on the one enterprise agreement.
Mr Byrne said the engineers feared losing conditions “in the longer term” if they became “minority partners” in an multi-union enterprise agreement that included the Maritime Union of Australia and the Australian Maritime Officers Union (AMOU).
He said a similar situation transpired at Port Hedland in 2014, when other unions traded off conditions that AIMPE was able to preserve in its own agreement.
But a spokesperson for Svitzer said a single agreement for everyone on board a tug made “common sense in 2016”.
“What’s more, under the proposed new agreement all the conditions, entitlements and protections engineers receive today will remain unchanged for the next four years,” Svitzer said.
The company said it was still giving its employees the chance to vote from January 19 to 22 on a new four-year agreement.
