NEWCASTLE tugboat workers are among 580 Svitzer staff who will be locked out of port when industrial action escalates on Friday.
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Tugboat operator Svitzer says it will lock out workers indefinitely from 17 ports in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia.
Svitzer has been working to finalise a new enterprise agreement for workers over the past three years, but has moved to the lockout after almost 2000 hours of industrial action by unions in the past month.
Maritime Union of Australia national secretary Paddy Crumlin said the company would throw Australia's supply chain into chaos, and have an "extraordinary" effect on businesses and consumers.
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Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke said the government's industrial relations reform would help end such drawn out fights.
"I'm devastated by the way the whole dispute has unfolded," he told 2GB on Tuesday.
"I want a situation where the industrial umpire can come in and sort it out, and the laws to be able to do that are in front of the parliament now."
NSW Transport Minister David Elliott described Labor's claims its bill would help resolve disputes as "bollocks".
"In the last 24 hours we have seen industrial harmony go back 25 years and we can't live in a society where our entire nation's trade is paused," he told Seven's Sunrise.
Mr Elliott accused the unions of treating the Australian economy as a "plaything" as it was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It is not the time for unions to put a stranglehold on trade because we will find ourselves very lonely this Christmas with the difficulty of getting ships to and from our ports," he said.
"This will be a difficult time and the unions are not playing fair."
The Maritime Union of Australia's Newcastle branch secretary, Glen Williams, said Svitzer employed more than 120 people in the Port of Newcastle, where it ran an eight-tug system, with a ninth tug in reserve.
He said the 123 workers involved in the stoppage were spread evenly between the Australian Maritime Officers Union (AMOU), representing tug masters, the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers (AIMPE) representing the engineers and the MUA representing the deck crew or "ratings".
Mr Williams said the three unions had notified Svitzer of a 24 hour stoppage in Newcastle from midnight on Wednesday night, which was "protected action" taken under the Fair Work Act.
He said Svitzer was making huge profits in Australia and had used COVID as cover to try to cut the pay and conditions of its tug workers across the 17 ports it had contracts for.
"Now their response is an indefinite lockout from Friday," Mr Williams said.
"They have threatened their workers with the sack if they talk to the media."
Mr Williams said relations between Svitzer and the unions had historically been good in Newcastle, with only a couple of short stoppages for report-back meetings in the three years the unions had been trying to negotiate a new enterprise agreement.
"But it's out of the hands of local management, this one," Mr Williams said.
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- With Australian Associated Press
