Monday, May 11, 2009
Pay row leaves ore ship stranded
Monday, 11 May 2009
A PAY dispute between a shipping company and its Filipino crew has left 60,000 tonnes of iron ore destined for China sitting off Western Australia's north coast since Thursday. The 24 Filipino crew have refused to sail the bulk carrier Grand Esmeralda from Geraldton, 420km north of Perth, to China because they claim they have not been paid since March this year and are owed more than $US140,000 ($182,000) in wages.
The International Transport Workers Federation Australia is representing the crew in negotiations with the ship's owner, Greek-based multinational Newfront Shipping.
ITF Australia acting co-ordinator Matt Purcell said the company had a history of not paying their workers.
"This mob are shockers," he said. "They owe money everywhere. My concern is they haven't got it."
The same 24 crew were involved in a similar dispute with Newfront in March in Canada where they successfully claimed $US70,000 in unpaid wages.
But this money was supplied by a third party, not Newfront, and there are concerns that the company will struggle to find money to end the current dispute.
Mr Purcell said the crew would not leave the ship - which is sitting 500m off the coast of Geraldton - until the company paid their wages and gave assurances that they would have a paid way home from China to The Philippines.
"The crew haven't been paid since March. They are worried that when they arrive in China they'll be thrown in prison or abandoned," Mr Purcell said.
ITF inspector Adrian Evans is in Geraldton and in regular contact with the crew. He said the crew were poor men whose families had gone without food because they had not been paid.
"They're very desperate," he said. "Their families aren't able to eat ... these guys are stuck on a vessel working for free".
He said the crew had also been threatened by the company with a "blacklisting", which would result in no shipping company employing them.
Mr Evans said the global financial crisis had hit shipping companies hard and there was the possibility that the 24 crew would be left stranded.
"The financial crisis has been particularly brutal for international shipping, a number of operators have already gone belly-up and in some cases the vessels and the crew are just left there because the debts are worth more than the vessel.
"The crew are stuck with no money and no way of repatriating home."
The iron ore on board the Grand Esmeralda is from Mount Gibson Iron and has been purchased by Chinese company Shougang Concord.
Mount Gibson chief executive Luke Tonkin said yesterday that the dispute did not affect his company because it had fulfilled its part of the contract by loading the iron ore on to the ship. "It's a dispute between the crew and the owners of the vessel," he said. "We don't have anything to do with the vessel."
But Mr Purcell said companies such as Mount Gibson should not be using Newfront to transport their iron ore.
No one from Newfront could be contacted yesterday.
Source: The Australian
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