MARITIME unions have announced yet more industrial action for Svitzer Australia tug masters, engineers and deckhands.

In a notice, the towage operator said it is “experiencing a significant escalation in protected industrial action Across Australia’s major ports with widespread stoppages scheduled from tomorrow (10 November) through to Tuesday (15 November)”.

The company said the newly announced protected industrial action containers more than 80 hours of work stoppages across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

The unions previously announced work stoppages in WA and a wide array of ongoing bans across the country.

The newly announced protected industrial actions include:

  • For Brisbane, an eight-hour stop work period by tug masters from 2200 Saturday, 12 November until 0600 the following day, and an eight-hour stop work period by tug engineers from 0601 until 1401 on Sunday 13 November.
  • For Melbourne and Westernport, an eight-hour stop work period by deckhands, engineers and masters from 0001 until 0800 on Monday, 14 November.
  • For Sydney, a 48-hour ban by tug masters on the performance of work on certain shipping line vessels (understood to be Maersk) on Saturday, 12 November and Sunday 13 November; a 48-hour stop-work period by casual and fixed term tug masters from 0001, Saturday 12 November until 00:01, Monday 14 November; and a 48-hour ban on performing recall and/or relief work from 0001 Saturday 12 November until 0001, Monday 14 November.

And on Tuesday 8 November the unions announced several stop-work actions in WA.

At Albany and Fremantle, Svitzer said in a statement there is effectively 24 hours of work stoppages from 0700 on Thursday 10 November through a mix of tug engineer, master and deckhand stop-work actions.

And at Kwinana, there is a similar situation with an effective 25 hours of stoppages from 0700 on 10 November through a mix of engineer, master and deckhand stop-work actions.

These are in addition to myriad other stop-work actions and work bans that the Maritime Union of Australia, the Australia Maritime Officers Union and the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers have announced over recent weeks.

According to the latest list issued by Svitzer, there are nearly 200 current notices of protected industrial action by the unions (as of Wednesday afternoon).