Retiring union leader says he'll continue to fight

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Dave Morgan does not see retiring after 30 years as union leader of the country's seafarers as any reason to hang up his hat.

Or rather, the array of stylish felt fedora and panama hats he has collected from around the world to see him through industrial disputes of every season.

Undoubtedly the most sartorially elegant of the country's labour movement, and the youngest survivor of a generation of old-style union leaders, 63-year-old Mr Morgan seemed to use the ubiquitous hat as a psychological weapon to stamp his mark on any dispute.

"He was nicknamed The Hat - it shows a bit of presence, a bit of guile and guidance," says one union colleague.

"When The Hat arrives, the boss has to start talking straight - there can't be any more bullshit."

Asked about his choice of headwear, Mr Morgan professes a more pragmatic motive.

"I would have thought it pretty self-evident - I'm bald as a badger."

Mr Morgan, who went to sea as a 16-year-old deckhand in his native South Australia and migrated to this country on Christmas Eve in 1963, retired last week as joint president of the new Maritime Union of New Zealand at its inaugural conference.

That organisation was formed a year ago from a merger of watersiders and seafarers, to whose union he was first elected president in September 1973, ending his own time at sea.

But while most workers relaxed over Labour Weekend, he flew to London for a regular meeting of the International Transport Federation's seafarer section.

When he gets back, he will keep working part-time on "special projects" for the Maritime Union, particularly the development of the Tasman Maritime Federation which it established late last year with its Australian counterpart.

This could prove ominous for employers.

Asked if employers should be concerned, he says: "They should always be concerned when workers organise."

But for all his fighting talk, delivered in a fittingly gravelly voice, it is not hard to find an employer willing to praise him as a fair-minded if formidable opponent. "He is a straight up and down person," says Rod Grout, chief executive of coastal shipping fleet operator Pacifica Transport.

"He would fight tooth and nail but he was a good negotiator and you knew where you stood with him."

Mr Grout decries as unfair a lingering association in the public's mind between The Hat and disrupted school holidays from cancelled Cook Strait ferry sailings, and points to hefty contributions by Mr Morgan to shipping industry reforms.

"That's the terrible thing," he says of the ferry disputes.

"It hasn't happened for probably 10 to 12 years but people have trouble forgetting the past, even though Dave Morgan helped to turn that around."

Ferry passengers felt a brief blast from the past in the most recent school holidays, when they were once again stranded for several hours, but Mr Morgan blames this on a company rostering debacle which he says the parties are working to resolve out of court.

His other remaining duties include sitting on the boards of the Pacific Forum Line and the Maritime Safety Authority, to which the Government appointed him last November, just a month after he made outspoken comments about safety failings on foreign-flagged ships.

Although he received a standing ovation at last week's Council of Trade Unions conference, he was a relative newcomer to that organisation, having led a group of feisty small unions as founding president in 1993 of the more hard-line Trade Union Federation.

The federation wanted to oppose the Employment Contracts Act with more vigour than the CTU did, but united with the larger organisation three years ago after being persuaded that a change of leadership had made it a more robust campaigning body.

He remains unashamedly left-wing, having joined the Australian Communist Party as soon as he turned 18, although he says he is politically unaligned these days.

Despite the many disputes in which his union has been embroiled, Mr Morgan remains proudest of its role in the peace movement.

"And the one thing I am most proud of is our achievement in keeping the USS Truxton out of Wellington," he says of a refusal by unionists to berth the American warship or service it while it lay at anchor for six days in 1976.