Tony Burke has urged tugboat operator Svitzer to hold off on locking out its workers until new laws to arbitrate “intractable” industrial disputes are in place.
The lockout has prompted fears of widespread supply chain disruptions ahead of Christmas.
The workplace relations minister said he was “devastated” at the way the dispute had developed after the Danish company announced a planned indefinite lockout of 590 workers at 17 ports from midday on Friday.
Svitzer is the largest tugboat operator in Australia, with 100 vessels and 50,000 tug movements a year, meaning the lockout is likely to shut down container movements.
Disruption of that scale is sufficient to trigger the Fair Work Act’s limited powers for the minister to ask the industrial umpire to terminate strikes and arbitrate a dispute.
Svitzer and the unions have been working to finalise a new pay deal for workers at the 17 ports for the past three years, but the company said it saw “no other option” but to lock out its workforce over stalled negotiations.
The Maritime Union of Australia’s national secretary, Paddy Crumlin, has accused the company of “escalating, threatening and bullying” in an attempt to access arbitration rather than negotiate a deal.
Burke told 2GB Radio that Labor’s industrial relations bill would give the Fair Work Commission the power to arbitrate “intractable” disputes.
He said the current laws are “ridiculous” because the umpire can only “blow the whistle” when both sides agree to arbitration.
Burke said shutdowns “[don’t] just affect the people who work there; it affects the people at the ports, it then affects the truck drivers, it affects people at the warehouses and ultimately you end up shopping at Christmas time and what you need on the shelves isn’t there”.
Burke also appeared to link the dispute to the disruption of passengers during the Sydney train strikes, noting “this is not the only long-running dispute that has been driving people spare, particularly across NSW, over the last 12 months or so”.
“I want the umpire to be able to make decisions on protracted disputes.
“You’ll often get in a negotiation brief disputes that go back and forth … But these long protracted ones – you need to have a system where the umpire can step in and say ‘OK we’re going to sort this out’.
“I’m hopeful we’re only two or three weeks away from that being law. I wish the company could just pause and take breath and wait for those laws to be in place.”
The Albanese government’s secure jobs, better pay bill, passed the House of Representatives on Thursday but needs one more vote to pass the Senate, where Labor is lobbying the Australian Capital Territory’s David Pocock to get it over the line.
On Tuesday Guardian’s Essential poll found that half of Australians support the bill, with even its most controversial proposals for multi-employer pay deals and flexible work rights enjoying majority support.
On Monday the Svitzer managing director, Nicolaj Noes, said the company’s “goal all along has been to reach a new enterprise agreement and we have exhaustively negotiated in good faith to try to do this”.
“We had hoped it would never come to a lockout – but we are at a point where we see no other option but to respond to the damaging industrial action under way by the unions,” Noes said.
The company said there had been more than 1,100 instances of protected industrial action since October 2020 taken by the MUA, Australian Maritime Officers Union, and the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers.
Svitzer’s decision is the biggest lockout since Qantas grounded its fleet in 2011 – a controversial tactic that triggered the Fair Work Act’s limited powers to arbitrate a dispute after terminating industrial action.
Crumlin told ABC News Breakfast that Svitzer was “shutting the country down – a bit like Qantas did”.
“It’s a war on everything. It’s a war on the consumer, a war on the economy, a war on the workforce.”
He said that by not agreeing to a new pay deal for three years, the company had “forced a wage freeze” on its workers and there was “no mechanism” to get them to agree.
Asked if the dispute should be arbitrated by the FWC, Crumlin said that was “the reason [the company are] doing it”.
“They’re a militant employer that’s got monopoly control of the Australian economy.”
Crumlin said there was “no mutual respect, and there’s no willingness to negotiate an outcome” by Svitzer.
The New South Wales transport minister, David Elliott, has said he will hold urgent talks with Svitzer, warning that “we can’t live in a society where our entire nation’s trade is paused because the union wants to dictate to an employer who can get a job”.
Crumlin said it was “not true” that the effect of union claims was that they would be able to pick workers.
