Finally, data: What the Ports pay

At last, things are clear. The wharfies are currently paid at $27.40 an hour (which, to make the point, isn't a high wage). The normal average annual wage is, as MUNZ said, $57k.  They get to the much quoted $90k a year only by working 68 hour weeks. Vast overtime is needed because. first, it looks like the port is understaffed, and, second, because the arbitrary timing of ship arrivals makes such staffing problematic for management. Management has been deliberately obfuscating the data (all this stuff about $90k for a 26 hour week). Regulation breaks do not permit people to work more than 44.5 hours of the 68 - management has been deliberately using data that doers not include that downtime (when people are on the job but must by law rest).

Now we have the story, the following becomes clear:

• MUNZ really needs to tell its story better
• the media are shocking at times - they have purveyed the $90k fallacy unquestioningly and simply failed to get to the root of the issue
• Ports management have been devious in the presentation of data
• the real trigger point was the arbitrary casualisation of the driving of four straddles during the course of an extant CEA
• management changed its position when an agreement was close, and has worsened this dispute by demanding far wider casualisation even though the current agreement has substantial and effective elements of flexibility therein
• MUNZ is now shown to have made very realistic demands in the context of a roll-over of an agreement that management has been comfortable with for years
• either the CEO, or, more likely, the CEO with the support of the board, has decided to precipitate this much worse dispute deliberately, although an agreement on a roll-over arrangement was close
• the spotlight now needs to be pointed baldly at the CEO and the board. They have some explaining to do.

It also looks like the Tauranga CEO doesn't think much of his Auckland counterpart!