Unions vow to defeat Asciano’s Botany plan

Asciano, parent company of the stevedore Patrick, yesterday announced a $348m plan to expand capacity and boost efficiency at its Port Botany container terminal.

Apart from improvement to landside facilities and an expansion of berthing space, Asciano aims to spend $77m on 44 automatic straddle (AutoStrad) carriers and making redundant large numbers of wharfies.

Last night, ITF general secretary David Cockroft said that plan “will be defeated.”

“In 1998, when Patrick resorted to dirty tricks and one of the biggest attempts at union busting in Australian history,” he alleged, “they were handed a bloody nose by the country’s workers and their compatriots abroad.”

“The lessons we learned then will be applied again now, until Patrick steps back from this latest attempt,” he said.
ITF president Paddy Crumlin, who is also the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) national secretary, said the planned move by Asciano was “not acceptable.”

Mr Crumlin alleged that during the lengthy, recent enterprise agreement negotiations, Asciano did not mention any planned introduction of AutoStrad carriers.

“It’s not acceptable to fail to mention this extraordinary and well-planned action during some 20 months of negotiations,” Mr Crumlin said.