This 'AFR' article of Tuesday 10 January 2023 is food for thought given QUB owns 50 per cent of Patricks that operates wharfside terminals in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney among other activities of the conglomerate:

If the MUA can strike, why not tug owners?

An ingrained culture of strikes on the waterfront means that tug boat operators should be allowed to lock out their workers.

Aaron PatrickSenior correspondent

Jan 10, 2023 – 3.50pm

Last November, the Fair Work Commission prohibited tug boat operator Svitzer from taking one of the few options it had, short of capitulation, to bring protracted negotiations with three waterfront unions to a head.

After more than three years of fruitless talks about paring back restrictive workplace practices, Svitzer, part of the Maersk group, decided on a lockout – an employer’s equivalent of a strike.

A Svitzer tug boat at work.

At the behest of the unions and based on evidence provided by the Albanese government, acting president Adam Hatcher and deputy presidents Bryce Cross and Michael Easton decided to deny Svitzer this right on the grounds it would harm the national economy.

Important context was provided to the dispute this week in a Productivity Commission report that described the harm done to waterfront operators – and by extension Australian consumers – by legal and illegal union industrial action.

When they chose to unload ships, Australian crane operators are about as efficient as the global average, the commission found.

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Waterfront industrial agreements take years to settle. During negotiations, unions wear down their opponents with strikes and go-slow tactics.

Trivial pursuits

Strikes have become so ingrained in waterfront culture that they can be triggered by trivia.

DP World told the commission its entire operations were hit by a 24-hour strike over whether a union official should be invited to a regular meeting of local employee representatives.

At one terminal, a strike went ahead after wage increases had been settled. Another time, port workers decided to only use their non-dominant hands. The commission approved the left-handed approach.

When the affected stevedore companies subcontract the unloading of ships, the subcontractor is often subjected to industrial action too. Secondary boycotts, which have been prohibited for almost fifty years, appear to be imposed on specific shipping lines and types of cargos.

“There is a history of unlawful industrial action in container ports,” the commission said in Lifting productivity at Australia’s container ports: between water, wharf and warehouse.

The consequence is more expensive trade and lower living standards for non-waterfront workers. A 2021 three-week strike at Port Botany in Sydney raised the cost of shipping grain overseas by $12 to $15 a tonne.

In a letter to the commission, the Maritime Union of Australia argued that its members had a fundamental right to strike.

“Virtually any worker withdrawing their labour will impact others’ and that without strike action, businesses and governments are unlikely to take action in the interests of workers,” the union said.

The union was correct. It was formed to represent its members’ interests, not the country’s, a task it executes with determined persistence.

The Svitzer case demonstrated how the industrial relations bureaucracy protects a negotiating power asymmetry. If port workers don’t want to work, why can’t their employer stop working too?