Maritime unions in Canada are supporting colleagues in Australia that were sacked after an Australian shipping company decided to replace them with foreign crew on flag of convenience (FoC) vessels and employed them on lower pay, with poorer conditions.
Specifically, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) has condemned the decision by the BHP and Bluescope companies to stop using Australian crew on its shipping vessels. This decision ended 100 years of Australian-crewed iron ore shipping.
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The union called the Australian government to bring in legislation to protect Australian maritime jobs, and has also established a ‘Save Australian Shipping’ jobs embassy outside Parliament House in Canberra.
In addition, Canadian maritime unions expressed their solidarity in rallies in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver backing the call to protect domestic maritime workers working in their domestic waters.
Commenting on the decision of the companies to flag out their crews, ITF president and MUA national secretary Paddy Crumlin stated that they had:
Invested in areas where you don’t pay taxes, where you’ve got no legal rights, where you’ve got no labour rights … We’re fighting for [those workers] too, and their right to work in their own country, in their own shipping lines, on their own roads, in their own trucks, in their own manufacturing
In the meantime, the ITF is attempting to investigate claims by foreign crew on board a Liberia-flagged, Greek-owned ship at a BHP coal terminal in Queensland that they have not been paid or received food, and have to depend on a food budget of AUSD 4 per day.
