Carter Holt prefers court to more port mediation

By PAULA OLIVER

Carter Holt Harvey is spurning a mediator's final recommendation that it drop its pending court action over the long-running ports dispute and hold more talks with the Waterfront Workers' Union.

The company says more mediation will not solve anything as the dispute has become a political minefield.

Carter Holt's four-month industrial dispute centres on its use of out-of-town Mainland Stevedoring to load logs on to its ships in the South Island.

The union originally claimed that the practice casualised work previously done by permanent employees, undermined safety standards, and used North Island workers for South Island jobs.

The final report into the dispute by veteran mediator Walter Grills, which was released yesterday by Labour Minister Margaret Wilson, confirms that, after two months of mediation, the parties are in a stalemate.

The report calls for Carter Holt to drop an attempt to gain a court injunction against protesters disrupting the loading of its ships, and for the union to simultaneously stop picketing.

It then asks the parties to start talking again and work towards a more competitive tendering process, and a cross-hiring agreement.

It also wants a Government inquiry into the social impacts of the port reforms of the late 1980s.

Carter Holt's chief operating officer, Jay Goodenbour, said yesterday that Carter Holt would not withdraw its court action unless it got an iron-clad letter from the union saying it would stop disrupting loading. The company would also not enter into further mediation.

Mr Grills' report says the primary issue of the dispute is that the union says the stowage contract in question was never put to tender or competition. Mr Goodenbour said the issue of anti-competitiveness had never been brought up in mediation, and the final report was a shock because it asked for a Government inquiry into the social impacts of the port reforms.

"There's a new set of issues in this report, because the others fell over.

"Further mediation can't work because this is a political document. The country needs more wide open and competitive ports, and anything else would be negative.

"At the end of the day, I think the report has a social agenda."

A compromise deal offered by the union, which was rejected by Carter Holt and Mainland last week, asks for the opportunity for a trial loading of a ship to decide which company gives the best service.

Mr Goodenbour said that was not the way the company did business.

"We tender out every contract, ship by ship," he said.

"But if you do something like a trial, where one company can see how the other does things, then it takes away the spirit to innovate."

Ms Wilson yesterday joined Mr Grills in calling for further talks, and endorsed the call for an end to court action and disruptive pickets. She would not commit the Government to an inquiry into the reforms.

But Carter Holt's application for an injunction is scheduled to be heard in the Wellington High Court tomorrow, leaving little time for the parties to agree.

The company is keen to have the injunction in place before the arrival of its next ship in Bluff on Friday.

Mr Grills' report concludes that concerns over out-of-town workers were unfounded.

It suggests that worries over the legitimacy of the union that Mainland's workers belong to should be handled through Employment Relations Act mechanisms rather than by disruptive pickets.