Secret Midnight Guerrilla Raid On Ship Alcoa

The Australian crew of the long-stranded Alcoa ship was forcibly removed by the security guards.

A sudden Guerrilla raid was launched on a ship that was docked in the far south-west Victorian port of Portland.  The vessel remained stranded for two months, with its sacked Australian crew refusing to sail it to Singapore.

At 1 am on wednesday the Security Guards mounted a secret midnight raid on the ship.  The five crew members were removed from the vessel and the guards escorted a replacement crew who immediately began sailing the carrier towards Singapore.

In 1998, 40 Australian crew members lost legal actions in the Fair Work Commission of Patrick Corporation and the Federal Court, where they argued the Federal Government’s “temporary coastal licence”.

Alcoa has justified its action saying that it is a  “decisive action today to end protracted illegal industrial action”.

“This is the worst example of guerrilla tactics to get rid of Australian workers since Patricks,” said the MUA national secretary, Paddy Crumlin.

“If nothing else, a government in Australia should stand up for Australian jobs,” said Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.  Mr. bill added that he was also worried about national security and protection of the local environment.

ACTU assistant secretary Scott Connolly described the early morning raid as “an attack on Australian workers and their families that has no place in a modern Australian workplace”.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said: “it is not for industrial parties to pick and choose which orders of the Commission they will comply with.  If the obligation to follow orders of the independent umpire is only seen as optional, then the integrity of the entire Fair Work system is put at risk.”

The managing director of Alcoa Australia, Michael Parker, said, “Alcoa has been extremely tolerant and given the MUA and its members every opportunity to stop their illegal industrial action.”

Source: The Age

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