FORMER crew members of the alumina ship CSL Melbourne will protest outside the electorate office of Paterson MP Bob Baldwin on Friday morning.
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Newcastle Trades Hall Council secretary Daniel Wallace said the protest followed last Friday’s “intimidating” removal of five Australian crew members from the ship by NSW police officers.
The CSL Melbourne dispute flared after the ship was no longer needed to take alumina from Gladstone to Newcastle and its owners put it on international duty, replacing its Australian crew with a foreign crew in Singapore.
In a related development on the Newcastle waterfront, the International Transport Workers Federation has released photographs of working conditions on board a Greek-owned ship, the Christine B, which was recently berthed in Newcastle.
The federation’s national co-ordinator Dean Summers said the Christine B’s 19 Filipino crew had been forced to scale makeshift scaffolding made of ladders and planks to clean the inside of their vessel while anchored at Argentina without any safety equipment or harnesses.
“These men are being forced to put their lives at risk by spending a month like this cleaning the cargo hold,” Mr Summers said. “It’s yet another example of the atrocious alternative to national flagged shipping and a warning of what’s to come.”
He said the federation had won $US30,000 ($42,000) in back pay for the Filipino crew, who had been underpaid for the 14 months they had been on board.
On the alumina ship dispute, Mr Baldwin said he was happy to meet the seafarers, but he said he had also been approached by Pacific Aluminium, the Rio Tinto subsidiary that runs Tomago Aluminium.
He said CSL Melbourne had traditionally supplied the Tomago and Kurri Kurri aluminium smelters. He said Rio’s contract with the ship expired recently and it sought a smaller Australian vessel but there were no takers so it had to look internationally.
“There are workers at Tomago Aluminium who are concerned about their jobs at the smelter if the seafarers’ protests delay the arrival of alumina in Newcastle,” Mr Baldwin said.
Mr Summers said Australia should follow America’s lead and protect its domestic shipping industry on environmental, economic and national security grounds.
