Ports management now actively promoting industrial activity: What price "Good Faith"?

The CTU notes in a press release following last week's failed mediation:

"Despite Port employers acknowledging in Mediation today that a proposal tabled by the Maritime union went “a considerable way to meeting its labour allocation issues and was big in a financial sense to the Port” the Port employers rejected the opportunity to settle this dispute unless the workers concede complete managerial discretion to the employer over the manner in which they are employed."

This is confirmed for me by other, non-union sources as accurate. In other words, there is a positive sum settlement to be had, but management is intransigent. Let us be very clear here. Management have changed position utterly in the course of this negotiation. They have achieved an outcome via mediation which, at the beginning of the process, would have met their needs and more. They are now, out of left field, demanding extraordinary flexibility, are apparently happily promoting industrial action, and now prefer an option which involves sacking the existing workforce and moving to a contract-based system. By any standards, a board and CEO that changes horses in mid-race in this way, and is now actively obstructing settlement except on its own terms, is behaving unreasonably.

Why is this? It is clear that there is now a privatisation agenda being run by the POAL board and CEO. They have seen the election result. They see partial privatisation coming fast in SOEs. They have judged the time ripe to promote the privatisation of POAL and, also in tune with National policy, the destruction of MUNZ.  They are doing so in the name of a council led by a Labour-backed mayor. The population of Auckland is being played as suckers by elements of the business community, insouciant in their knowledge of Government support for their position. Mayor Brown knows this. He must act. I expect Mr Shearer and Mr Twyford to move on this shortly. They too must see that a "wait and see" approach to this dispute is ceding a far bigger principle than POAL labour flexibility.