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Do you believe Kelly’s numbers?

by Whaleoil on January 12, 2012

Lynn Prentice is busy posting his friend Helen Kelly’s numbers on the Ports of Auckland wages. Never mind that she wrote it days before the POAL confirmed the numbers that Cactus Kate released. The Maritime Union has obviously had to call in the big guns to help them.

We are supposed to believe her numbers over those of the company that actually pays the wages.

However she appears to be as economically illiterate as Penny Bright. Either that or she is dreadfully stupid and just blindly repeating wrong figures that Penny Bright manufactured from her mis-reading of company accounts.

So can we believe her numbers. Well it appears that the head of the Council of Trade Unions doesn’t understand how to read a financial statement, even after said statements were proven by me to be demonstrably false. Yet the unions continue to act as if they are best positioned to tell businesses how they should be operating.

Maybe this is how the Hobbit Haters almost cost 3,000 New Zealand film workers their jobs.

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  • Coventry

    WO – you missed the bit about Aaron G (the labour trogling) wanting a job in a union – he’s a smart one, guess he knows a gravy train.

  • Davidw

    It would be a nice bit of balance if we could get some sort of insight into the wages and conditions of the Union people who strategise these strikes and cost members their livelihoods in pursuit of a political agenda.  

    Mr Parsloe (for example) should have as much to gain in the long term by seeing his members continue in paid employment and thus continue to pay their subs which become his salary.

      However if he is treating his members as disposable foot soldiers in a greater battle and is on the verge of retirement anyway or has a golden parachute in his own employment conditions and is receiving income up there in line with his members’ annual average while they are all getting zip for holding placards, then they are just “useful idiots” (was that Marx who termed the phrase? – Karl not Groucho) and as such are in line to be cast aside. 

    My rationale for suggesting that this information is relevant? – well my rates are going to be affected and people I know are going to be affected in the wider repercussions of this dispute and I am really interested in all factors relevant to finding a solution.  The true motivation of Mr Parsloe and the Maritime Union strategists has yet to be revealed.

    Someone must be able to send some useful backgroud to the WO tipline if they can’t bring themselves to post directly.

  • ConwayCaptain

    Davidw

    As i posted elsewhere, when I was at seas albeit 20 yrs ago, someone like Parsloe was paid the same as a Bosun on the coastal tankers so was on a damn good salary. Plus Union supplied car etc.

    He would be in the Union super scheme as well.

  • Davidw

    Thanks Captain.  Yers I did see your comment but I not only haven’t a clue what a bosun is worth these days (given that coastal is almost nonexistant) nor whether that is the benchmark still applied. 

    About all I know about Union conditions of employment is that they are arsehole employers (witness the treatment of the guy who wanted to stand for parliament for someone other than Labour), can’t organise their own affairs (witness McCarten’s dodgy accounting and what looks like tax fraud), are generous in giving away OPM (witness various donation returns from certain politicians), are free with the perks (witness the number of EPMU signwritten cars tooling around with families at the Mall on weekends and Helen Kelly racking up some nice air dollars trying in vain to make a point about Fiji) and are otherwise neither public nor accountable for their finances or actions. 

  • Sars

    Well you can see here at the Companies Office that the Maritime Union Stevedores Limited is a company – it has three directors (Russell Mayn, Gary Parsloe and David Phillips) and two share bundles – both held by the Maritime Union of New Zealand Incorporated. 
    http://www.business.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/96717

    So a quick trip over to the Incorporated Societies page is necessary…latest financial statements uploaded are only to 31 March 2009; tsk tsk tsk very late getting their 2010 accounts filed with the register. 2011 will be due very soon as well. You can see on page 10 that wages paid are $371k but because of their structure this is unlikely to include payments to the directors. $1.045m invested in South Canterbury Finance on page 12…ouch! Bearing in mind these statements are nearly three years old, they could well have gotten their money out before then. If they didn’t, hand out to the deposit guarantee scheme no doubt. 
    http://www.societies.govt.nz/cms/online-services/register-search/banner_template/CNAME 

    Also interesting to note that no value of the shares in the Maritime Union Stevedores Limited are shown on page 12 (unless they are tucked up in the undisclosed ‘Investment Portfolio’ of around $929k)

    So to recap
    Maritime Union Stevedores Limited is a NZ registered company with three directors and one shareholder which is…
    Maritime Union of New Zealand. The company is therefore a ‘closely held’ entity and not required to publish financial reports to the public. This prevents us from seeing the directors fees or salaries that Parsloe et al draw from either the company or the incorporated society. 

    • Sars

      The link to the financial reports didn’t work…you can find them by searching the register for Maritime Union of New Zealand and navigate to their 2009 Annual Report quite easily

    • Gazzaw

      Good work Sars. Kosh will be somewhat distressed by these cunning capitalist ploys.

  • Super Guest

    I have no respect for Helen Kelly. Seeing her crying after trying to knife our film industry for the sake of unions was one of the best things I’ve ever seen.