Local jobs at risk in offshore industry A local crew in the Taranaki offshore industry have been pushed out by overseas owned agents OSM – but the Maritime Union is fighting back for local jobs. Maritime Union Wellington Branch Secretary Jim King says five crew members working aboard the ‘Siem Amethyst’ had been expected to accompany the vessel back to Asia in May 2021 at the conclusion of its charter. Four of the crew were New Zealanders and one was a Maritime Union of Australia member covered by the same terms and conditions of employment. The ‘Siem Amethyst’ had been working in the Taranaki offshore having been delivered by a crew from Asia earlier this year. However, without the knowledge of crew or Union, crewing agency OSM had secretly kept the overseas seafarers in New Plymouth in accommodation for several months and had now given them the job of crewing the vessel on its return voyage.
Mr King says the long standing arrangement as per the employment agreement was New Zealand crews would do this work. He says industrial and legal action was in the pipeline, and the dispute was already on the radar across the Tasman with the Maritime Union of Australia whose members work for OSM in that jurisdiction. Our Union position is that OSM is undermining the New Zealand maritime industry, and is creating a major problem in the offshore industry. Mr King makes it clear the dispute is not with overseas crew members. “This dispute is with an overseas owned company profiting off our natural resources but attacking local jobs and decent wages and conditions.” He says the one motive is pure corporate greed, as the motive was the extra profit from inferior terms and conditions. The Maritime Union has approached the Government to act now as the situation is a clear breach of not just an employment agreement but rules around overseas workers in New Zealand.
THE MARITIMES
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