Posted by
Retired Felixstowe Dockers
- Get link
- Other Apps
I am posting this on behalf of Svein Lundeng
Facts and fiction in Mosjøen Port
It is now over 8 months since we in Mosjøen Transport Arbeider Forbund avd. 147 (MTAF) got locked out from our place of work and perhaps it’s about time to write a little recap about what has happened here in Mosjøen.
The 9th of May 2014 was to be payday for work done in weeks 17 and 18 according to our signed and valid CBA, on the 8th of May we received a message from our accountant that there had be no money transfer to cover our salaries that day and there was no guarantee in place that we would get the money, this for clarification as been a problem for years i.e to get salaries paid on time.
Since we in MTAF do not work for free we stopped work and said that we will not begin again until we have either had our wage paid or at least a guarantee that we would get our money. This resulted in Jarle-Berg Oksfjellelv head of operations for Grieg Logistics in Mosjøen initiated a lockout with Alcoa.
After the lockout started there was a good deal of claims from the employer’s side that they cannot substantiate or show documentation for but we shall try to shed some light on these here.
On the 13th of May or 5 days after the lockout started Mr. Rune Birkeland CEO of Grieg Logistics claimed that Grieg Logistics does not owe us anything and that everything is paid on time.
On the 13th of May or 5 days after the lockout started Mr. Rune Birkeland CEO of Grieg Logistics claimed that Grieg Logistics does not owe us anything and that everything is paid on time.
Truth is that on the 9th and 16th of May we did get some of the money owed to us for work already done but 2 weeks after its due date. We in MTAF can document all delays with wage payments and all irregularities are verifiable furthermore in 2013 alone there was over 100 salary bills that were paid too late.
Mr.Birkeland maintains that the root of the conflict is a disagreement about how many workers there are per shift, this is simply not true; we are in disagreement with Grieg about how many workers there are per shift but that has nothing to do with the lockout.
The CEO of Grieg Logistics Mr.Birkeland continues by saying that there is a great deal of displeasure within Grieg Logistics with our “Continued threats” to stop work. Mr.Birkeland however completely leaves out why these “Continued threats” came to be, we have on 2 occasions been forced to caution Grieg Logistics that we would be forced to stop work because of delayed salary payments.
Mr.Birkeland does not stop there; on the 18th of May 2014 he boldly claims in the local news paper that from October 2013 to May 2014 there have been several attempts to have negotiation meetings with MTAF but to no avail. This is very strange to see because in this period we have been called in to 5 meetings with Grieg Logistics and we have attended every single one.
On the 3rd of November we had a meeting with Mr.Birkeland and representatives from NHO (Norwegian Employer Association) to try and find a solution to the conflict but with no result. At this meeting Mr.Birkeland told us about his displeasure with how MTAF operates and could tell us that a whopping 85% of the ships being serviced by us at the Port of Mosjøen in the period from summer 2013 until the lockout started were behind schedule. We of course asked if Mr.Birkeland could back up his claims with documentation but he was not interested.
We can however document that this is not the case, furthermore this gets a little bizarre when in an e-mail Head of Operations Jarle-Berg Oksfjellelv compliments us for a job well done.
On the 3rd of November we had a meeting with Mr.Birkeland and representatives from NHO (Norwegian Employer Association) to try and find a solution to the conflict but with no result. At this meeting Mr.Birkeland told us about his displeasure with how MTAF operates and could tell us that a whopping 85% of the ships being serviced by us at the Port of Mosjøen in the period from summer 2013 until the lockout started were behind schedule. We of course asked if Mr.Birkeland could back up his claims with documentation but he was not interested.
We can however document that this is not the case, furthermore this gets a little bizarre when in an e-mail Head of Operations Jarle-Berg Oksfjellelv compliments us for a job well done.
On the 30th of December 2014 we get a letter from Mr.Oksfjellelv saying that in accord with the Labor Court ruling of October 8th 2014 Grieg Logistics is no longer obliged to use MTAF operators to load and unload ships in Mosjøen Port and will thereafter use its own employees. This is an odd interpretation of the court’s ruling as it applies to the so called “Rammeavtale” CBA and not to our “Sør og Nord Norge Avtale” which we use in Mosjøen. It also seems that the employers have not read the whole verdict as it ends by saying “ It is not the Courts to decide this as it is something to be negotiated between Employers and Employees. Furthermore this is odd indeed as Mr.Oksfjellelv said himself on the 16th of June 2014 in the local newspaper that “there was no wish to set aside the CBAs already in place in Mosjøen Port”. It is great to see that the relationship between Grieg Logistics is based on a CBA but not as a common customer like has been maintained.
Some has said that paying these salary bills from us a few days overdue is not so dangerous,
but the fact is that we are a nonprofit workers union, according to law we are not allowed to make any profit from our operations and therefore it is vital for us to get the money in on time cover salary payments, taxes, etc,etc.
It’s not like we are talking about 1-2 days either, we have many times had bills go 12-14 days overdue in the past. It’s a given that if this goes on for a long time then there will be problems both for our workers but as well with taxes and such, because of this we made the demand to Grieg Logistics that we where to have a “buffer” of 500.000 NOK to cover such events but that got promptly declined by Grieg Logistics.
but the fact is that we are a nonprofit workers union, according to law we are not allowed to make any profit from our operations and therefore it is vital for us to get the money in on time cover salary payments, taxes, etc,etc.
It’s not like we are talking about 1-2 days either, we have many times had bills go 12-14 days overdue in the past. It’s a given that if this goes on for a long time then there will be problems both for our workers but as well with taxes and such, because of this we made the demand to Grieg Logistics that we where to have a “buffer” of 500.000 NOK to cover such events but that got promptly declined by Grieg Logistics.
When Mr.Birkeland claims that 85% of ships in Mosjøen port departed behind schedule from summer of 2013 until the lockout started May 8th 2014 we must ask him for documentation for such claims, we have a suspect that Mr.Birkeland takes into account all ships that go through the port to get such high numbers, the fact is that MTAF members only service boats that transport containers to Iceland and aluminum to Rotterdam. We do not service the ships that unload raw material to produce aluminum, these ships are serviced by Grieg Logistics own employees and are unloaded by a vacuum pump.
Mr.Birkeland will not show any documents to support his claims but we have all the documentation needed to support ours.
Alcoa require the ships to be out of the port by 22:00 every Wednesday night, which gives us about 64 hours if Grieg Logistics has us work around the clock from 06:00 Monday morning. If we look at the period from week 18 2013 to week 18 2014 (Lockout started in week 19) then we see that we used more than 64 hours in 9 instances out of 53, most of these occurred in the autumn of 2013 when Grieg Logistics bought a new crane, we all have to get used to new equipment and so on. There have also been instances when Alcoa did not have all of the cargo ready for loading and therefore was the ship delayed.
Alcoa require the ships to be out of the port by 22:00 every Wednesday night, which gives us about 64 hours if Grieg Logistics has us work around the clock from 06:00 Monday morning. If we look at the period from week 18 2013 to week 18 2014 (Lockout started in week 19) then we see that we used more than 64 hours in 9 instances out of 53, most of these occurred in the autumn of 2013 when Grieg Logistics bought a new crane, we all have to get used to new equipment and so on. There have also been instances when Alcoa did not have all of the cargo ready for loading and therefore was the ship delayed.
We have felt for many years that there was a campaign against us that we were being defamed by Grieg Logistics. After a meeting with Alcoa’s HR Manager Rachel Berg that was exactly the feeling we got; that Grieg Logistics blamed anything and everything that happened squarely on us.
We have also heard that we are against any changes or modernization at the Port, this is a not true but we would like to have a say in how our place of work is to be and how it will affect us. In the year 2000 we had 14 men on each shift, today we have 5 so to say that we are against modernization or new work methods is a moot point, the numbers speak for themselves.
One should take into consideration that when it comes to negotiating the shift size then we have according to law a negotiation committee with 2 representatives from us and 2 from Grieg Logistics, we have also a committee to negotiate any changes to CBAs but there seems to be no interest from the employers side to use chose channels anymore.
One should take into consideration that when it comes to negotiating the shift size then we have according to law a negotiation committee with 2 representatives from us and 2 from Grieg Logistics, we have also a committee to negotiate any changes to CBAs but there seems to be no interest from the employers side to use chose channels anymore.
It looks like the “new” way of doing things is to force a reaction from us to initiate a lockout; later on they cite a verdict from the Labor Court which they choose to interpret very freely to say the least, add to that that the verdict they cite is from the 8th of October 2014 and we got locked out on May the 8th 2014.
We in MTAF expect that people shall honor contracts made both locally and by central leadership and to think that on the 10th of May 2014 or 2 days after the Lockout started there was signed a new CBA valid till 2016. This only makes it clearer to us that Grieg Logistics and Alcoa are attempting to bust a union and to undo valid CBAs.
Our only demand on the 8th of May 2014 was to get our salary paid according to our CBA, we shall of course continue to get the employers to respect contracts that we are in agreement that we shall have.
This is just a short summarization of events in Mosjøen Port, with best of wishes to all our supporters: The members of MTAF, Mosjøen Norway.
This is just a short summarization of events in Mosjøen Port, with best of wishes to all our supporters: The members of MTAF, Mosjøen Norway.
Shared with Dropbox
DROPBOX.COM
Comments
Post a Comment