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MUNZ or Muppets?

by Whaleoil on February 29, 2012

The Maritime Union through their Labour party organised proxy support group Save our Ports released a video (make sure you have hankies and a bucket handy) purporting to tell the truth about the strike. Save our Ports is obviously hankering going for an Oscar of its own with the acting in this video.

Thanks to the tipline we know the truth:

In addition to shamelessly using union members children to try to gather sympathy, what is most appalling about this video is the participation in it of Carl Findlay, the MUNZ vice president.

Mr Findlay is the one with the two teenage children.  Whilst Mr Findlay has been actively bullying people at the port and insisting that they strike and back the union all the way, he has also openly admitted that he’s looking for jobs in Australia and plans to move there with his redundancy.  Which puts him in the shameful position of wanting negotiations to fail so that he can get a personal payout.

It’s also appalling that these parents are not protecting their children from this negativity and are instead actively inviting them to participate in it painting themselves as victims who their children have to defend.

The hypocrisy though – do as I say and not as I do, is quite galling.

Clearly Carl Findlay isn’t really thinking about his family because he is going to drag them to Australia…just as soon as he engineers himself out of a job and a payout.

While we are setting the record straight, one of the MUNZ members in the video was one who in 2010 received a final written warning for making threats against another staff member and that staff member’s family. Nice guys these union folk.

No one in the video even mentions that contracting out was in the old collective so their campaign and crocodile tears are nonsense, along with the lies about privatisation.

He’s taking a sacrificial bunt for the Union, I can’t wait to watch their next video where he tells everyone he is off to Oz because of the POAL.

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  • Frangi

    This is really disturbing.  The stevedores as parents are not protecting
    their children from the dispute and are instead dragging them through
    it and making them have to take on the role of defender and protector of
    their “victimised” parent.  Way too big a burden for those who are so
    young. It just puts the mans chip on his kids shoulder.  The kids are
    too young to have had the chance to know there are 2 sides and have not
    done their own investigation. All they know is that they love their
    Dad.  So the mind of the Dad is using the heart of the kid to promote
    his choice to strike over nothing.  They keep saying they just want
    things to stay the same yet when they were offered that choice by POA
    they insisted it wasn’t what they wanted and they chose to strike. Now
    they’re crying poor me and they’re doing it on their kids shoulders. 
    Alas!!  

    • ConwayCaptain

      Frangi, This is the way they work.  Have dealt with members of the NZ Seamen’s Union the younger ones were bought up from the day they were born being indoctinated with the Union message.

      In a place like Lyttelton that was basically populated by seamen and wharfies in the 70′s this was very apparent.  Sail with a Lytteklton crew and they had been brainwashed and indoctrinated to the core.

      • Frangi

         Sad :o (

        Using your kids that way and not letting them grow into their own potential, rather burdening them with your own limited scope.  Still MUNZ is not the only organisation/religion/government to do this.

        Must be hard knowing that none of your thoughts (apart from I need to poo) are your own.

      • AnonWgtn

        I understand that Lyttleton port is virtually f…d following the quake.
        It is very difficult to resurrect. Understand insurers are raising serious problems over rebuild, as Lyttleton wants it. 

  • peterwn

    Suppose that it would have been too expensive hiring Lucy Lawless for the movie even at mate’s rate’s.

    • Scanner

       She would probably recognize many of the wharf rats from her earlier career as a boat girl

      • Agent BallSack

        Ouch!

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OK7Y7PCSTJ27RCKZ2MGRSAYCTE NEIL

         Double ouch – have you proof?

  • Gazzaw

    ‘Save our Ports’ ads are wall to wall on Newstalk ZB (you can almost hear the cringe from Leighton Smith & Larry Williams when they play during their sessions). The campaign must be costing a fortune. Where are the funds coming from?

  • SJ00

    I feel sorry for the poor, hard done by, port workers. They cannot even afford colour in their lives. The other kids at school must mock the port workers children for turning up to school in their black and white gangster hats.

  • Prov

    Yeah, dragging their children into the dispute. I suppose the man with the $7000 watch Antonio Gibson advertising for stevedores in Australia to replace Auckland ratepayers is all clear on that one. All he is doing is destroying family livelihoods and making sure you don’t know when, how and if you are earning anything from one day to the next. I suppose the $750 000 a year overcomes any residual concerns he may have.

    • Jimbob

      Prov, you’re an idiot and have obviously climbed out of the same abattoir as kosh and phut! I have heard munz repeatedly go on about tony gibsons salary and have absolutely no evidence to substantiate that claim. any nutbag that can identify the value of a watch at medium distance is an absolute charlatan! Even the fashion conscience who earn their living on the red carpet have to seek clarification of what stars are wearing including the price tag. Where is CYFS’s when you need them? This is blatant abuse of a minor and is clearly a CTU generated video as that hobbit hater likes to load the gun but have others pull the trigger so that she continues her employment unscathed! Regardless Prov I very much enjoyed driving into work today to see a maersk ship being worked by non union workers! I see that even the largest shipping line in the world has had enough of this bullshit and has made it clear that business comes before unions! See ya Carl!

    • Piper

      Prov, if you spent time with these guys you’d know that they spend more time in pubs and drinking than with their families, that a number of them have been caught cheating – one of their wives came in to work and beat the stevedore up in the Bledisloe carpark, and that they are quite happy to let their womanfolk run the family unit.  They play sport, go fishing in their boats and I’m not saying that they don’t love their families and genuinely care about them but I think you will find that prior to the strike they weren’t going on and on about families like we currently hear them.  In the pre-strike days it was all about “I want 30 days paid sick leave a year”  Not “I’m just an ordinary man trying to make a decent living to support my family” “it’s just about ordinary people trying to raise their children”.  Put a survey out and identify how much of their wages they spend on booze and smokes and then we’ll see how much they care about providing for their families.I know of several wives who are threatening their husbands to go back to work and leave the union because their stevedoring partners are drinking away their savings at the moment with little thought of how the family will survive.

  • Adrian

    Very little is being said about casual workers at the port.  Ports of Auckland currently employs casuals so having a casual workforce is not something new to them.  Some of the casuals get guaranteed hours every week and others are people who have other jobs and top up their income by doing extra shifts at POA.  Many of the casuals see it as a chance to be noticed to get the opportunity to do extra training and become upskilled increasing the amount of work that they can become eligible for.  Extra skills often means opportunity for higher pay rates as well.

    At the Port of Tauranga which has a contracted out workforce, there are permanent shift jobs available and there are casual jobs.  There are fixed shifts for R&D drivers so that you always know what you are working.  There are also guaranteed hours each week that you will get a full weeks pay but there may be some flexibility in the start and finish hours as you start when the ships come in. Not at 07:00 as they do at POA when the ship starts at 13:00 and then you do one hours work for 8 hours pay.  No, at POT you work the ship and you get paid the hours you work.  This suits a lot of people and doesn’t suit others. 

    The POA stevedores have to make a decision.  Can I be flexible or can’t I?  If the answer is no, they have to leave and find another job.  It will be extremely difficult for them to find the conditions they used to have before they entered into the strikes in any other industry so either way they are a group of men who are going to have to face change and they’re fighting tooth and nail to stay the same.   You know the old saying …. “nothing lasts forever”

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OK7Y7PCSTJ27RCKZ2MGRSAYCTE NEIL

       If the casuals are getting guaranteed hours every week then surely they are not casual under the law – but “part timers”. Agree with the rest of your comments…too much trying to hang onto a 1950′s workplace in the 2010′s.

  • Agent BallSack

    This is Agent BallSack reporting from one year in the future. What’s a MUNZ?

    ~W

  • STEVE AND MONIQUE

    Keep up the good work Auckland wharfies,Tauranga is rubbing their hands together.And looks like the Proposed freight hub in Hamilton might get fast tracked now .Winners all round,below the Bombay hills.Wonder how much profit is going to be made, transporting to Auckland.Fire the lot of them before it is to late,and put those Union tossers in a dinghy in the middle of the Tasman,sans oars.

  • FartingRob

    Rod Oram from interview with Kathryn Ryan on Newstalk ZB about the POAL vs MUNZ situation:

    KATHRYN RYAN:      What happens now then. What is the future? And I think what
    you’ve intimated is this might be pretty ugly, which demoralises a workforce,
    although I think you’re suggesting some may go from that workforce as the
    structure of it changes.

    ROD ORAM:                Well
    the point is that if the port company decides to go to contracted work force,
    it – and it’s contractors then start, need… and some will be on staff too -
    then need start looking for those employees, those, many of those jobs are
    highly skilled. And the – I can imagine… I think this is a terribly difficult
    situation for people in the union.                                     
    They’re
    sitting there out on strike for at least three weeks. They then get redundancy
    notices. I’m assuming this is going to happen. So don’t take this as gospel.
    The redundancy notices come and they start seeing other people fill those jobs.And
    at some point – and it will be horrible social, another kind of pressure on
    them, sort of going well, actually, I would actually, you know, want that job.                                 
    And
    so that point maybe they break ranks.So
    I think it’s – at a personal level this is incredibly difficult for the people
    involved.

  • Jess

    More of a MUNZ Muppet – notice the similarity