Today, almost 600 seafaring crew employed by Svitzer Towage in Australia may be locked out of their workplaces by a Danish-owned multinational that enjoys near monopoly control of Australia's seaports. Many of these workers are employed on the waters of Newcastle Harbour, the jewel in the crown of Australia's maritime trading infrastructure.
At the time of writing, Svitzer's managers were before a full bench hearing of the Fair Work Commission in Sydney, defending their plan to lock the gates of Svitzer's yards and prevent tugboat crews attending their vessels and performing their duties. It is not known yet whether the lockout will go ahead or be terminated by the Commission, though with intervention by the federal government in recent days this is the likely outcome. Without tugboats and the skill, experience and hard work of their crews, cargo vessels cannot enter or leave Australian ports. Towage workers are essential to the smooth operation of our national supply chains and a crucial frontline workforce that facilitates the imports and exports our national economy thrives on.
Despite these realities, Svitzer is at war with its own workforce. The workers' crime? To ask for a wage increase that keeps pace with the cost of living and a fair share of the record profits being extracted by Svitzer and its multinational parent company. Svitzer Australia is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a global shipping giant - AP Moller Maersk. They operate the largest, most prolific and strategically significant towage operation in the country, but Maersk is also the second largest cargo shipping line in the world.
Despite the fact that Svitzer has a near-monopoly over Australian towage operations, the company funnels hundreds of millions of dollars overseas to shareholders in Copenhagen while paying minimal Australian tax on the way through. At the same time, Svitzer is also paid by the Australian taxpayer to provide emergency on-call towage services for maritime emergencies around the Australian coast.
This is a company that takes from the taxpayer and takes from its workforce, they pay little to no tax in Australia or in Denmark where they are based. The Danish people are campaigning that they should pay tax there.
Svitzer's name has been in the headlines recently because it was tugboat crews from Newcastle that sailed into the night to perform a daring rescue of the Portland Bay off the coast of Cronulla in July this year. The same tugboat - the Svitzer Glenrock - was also sent out more recently to rescue the Rio Madeira - a cargo ship owned by Svitzer's own parent company AP Moller Maersk - which broke down off the coast of NSW.
Locking out the tug crews of Svitzer is just the latest escalation in a years-long industrial dispute that has been waged against the workforce by Svitzer's management. Through delay, obstruction and disputation, Svitzer have managed to stall a fair pay rise since January 2019. That pay rise was just 1.5 per cent, and it hasn't shifted in almost four years, with no relief on the horizon amidst punishing cost of living pressures.
Svitzer's Danish parent company, AP Moller Maersk, delivered a profit to shareholders last year of over $21 billion. They are already boasting this year of a forecasted profit of $30 billion. These profits arise because of the massive, overwhelming supply chain pressures we have seen throughout COVID and the seismic shift in economic patterns on a global scale, all of which has been of significant commercial advantage to shipping companies and maritime services providers. Think of it this way - every dollar that hasn't been spent on international or domestic airfares has probably found its way into some form of household consumption, the majority of which depends on international shipping. Every extra container load of goods contributes to more demand for shipping capacity or movements. Likewise, the bumper crop of Australian grain that has worked its way through Newcastle port recently to markets in Europe, where war has caused massive disruptions for European farming, also lifts demand for export shipping activity. All of this finds its way onto the balance sheet of a vertically and horizontally integrated conglomerate like AP Moller Maersk and Svitzer.
Despite having Australian revenue over $350 million, Svitzer continues to obstruct a new employment agreement with its workforce and repeatedly turns to the nuclear option - termination of the lapsed employment agreement and a return to the basic Award. This would deliver a 47 per cent wage cut, casualise tugboat jobs and undermine key safety measures that have been hard-fought for over many years. In pursuit of this outcome, which they applied for in January 2022, they now plan to lockout their workers from every Svitzer yard in Australia, shutting down national supply chains and holding our country's economic prosperity hostage.
This would be an act of wilful economic and social sabotage committed against the Australian community by a multinational company which is making super-profits partly off the back of the professionalism and hard work of its highly trained workforce. The three maritime unions have been working to avert disaster and persuade Svitzer's management to return to the negotiating table to finalise a new, fair employment agreement. We remain ready and willing to do this, but Svitzer to date have ignored all appeals and seem determined to pursue their agenda that amounts to economic sabotage and commercial harm.
