Geraldton Port avoids coming to stand still after Fair Work Commission scraps towage company Svitzer lockout

Geraldton Port has avoided coming to a standstill after the Fair Work Commission order towing company Svitzer to scrap its lockout of its workers. Beginning on Friday, November 18 from 9am, ships would have been unable to leave or enter the Port of Geraldton because of a lack of towage-services. The Danish company had planned lockouts of 17 ports across Australia in retaliation for work stoppages carried out by workers from the Maritime Union of Australia, the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers, and the Australian Maritime Officers Union. Svitzer is the sole towage-operator in Geraldton, so ships would not have been able to enter or leave the port while the lockout was ongoing. Two ships are expected to arrive on Friday November 18, and 10 over the next week. The company also controls towage at the Fremantle, Kwinana and Albany ports, as well as major ports in the Eastern States. Before the commission’s decision, Mid West Ports Authority CEO Damian Tully said the port would be working closely with Svitzer to resume towage services and port operations as soon as possible. Svitzer’s workforce in Geraldton is made up of 27 captains, engineers and deckhands who operate the port’s three tug boats and would have been left locked out of work. The Geraldton-based workers held two four-hour work stoppages, first in August and then on November 4, as part of the union campaign. Svitzer and the unions have been negotiating over a new enterprise agreement since 2019, and the unions have said Svitzer has been unwilling to offer a fair wage which matches inflation. “This is a company that continues to attack its own workforce while it made $23 billion in profit last year and they’re on track to make $40b this year,” MUA’s WA branch secretary Will Tracey said before the commissions decision. “It’s absolutely disgraceful behaviour that in reaction to less than 24 hours of stoppages over two years, they want to hold the Port of Geraldton and the community of Geraldton to ransom.” Svitzer said it was seeking to remove restrictive practices from the agreement to keep the company’s Australian operations sustainable and competitive. Svitzer’s managing director Nicolaj Noes had said the lockout was an unfortunate but necessary response to union action. We had hoped it would never come to a lockout — but we are at a point where we see no other option but to respond to the damaging industrial action under way by the unions,” he said before the decision. “We sincerely regret the difficulties and disruption this lockout presents to our customers and other stakeholders within the supply chain, including, ultimately, every Australian consumer.” The Fair Work Commission decided the lockout would have caused significant damage to the Australian economy. The commission is set to convene on Friday to determine whether it will suspend or terminate the action completely. The lockout would have come during the harvest season, with close to a record amount of grain expected to pass through the port. Grain exporter CBH said it would have monitored and assessed the situation in the early stages if it had gone ahead.