Patrick risks reigniting an industrial dispute on Australian's waterfront after unveiling plans to lay off 270 of its 511-strong workforce at Port Botany and replacing them with automated equipment.
The stevedoring business — a division of Australia's largest listed ports and rail operator, Asciano — will make about half its workforce redundant once the US$348 million project, which aims to increase capacity at the terminal by more than a third, is completed in 2014, reported The Age.
Asciano chief executive John Mullen said the expansion would transform Port Botany into a world-class automated operation with four berths and 1.4km of quay line, delivering savings of $50 million per year.
As part of the switch to an automated terminal, Asciano will develop the so-called "Knuckle" site at the port and invest in technology to allow unmanned straddle carriers. They shift containers from the docks to holding yards. They do not require anyone to operate them.
The Maritime Union of Australia, which represents the wharfies, accused the company of resorting to the "mean and tricky ways" employed during the waterfront dispute in 1998, when Patrick sacked its workforce and attempted to replace it with non-union labour.
The union said it was considering "all its options", including unprotected strike action, to try to reverse the decision.
The plan was released two months after Patrick ended a 20-month-long dispute involving about 1,200 wharfies around the country that at times came close to turning into a Qantas-style lockout.
"The ink is not even dry on that document and we find ourselves in a position where half the workforce will have their jobs destroyed," MUA Sydney branch secretary Paul McAleer said.
"In 1998 Patricks chose to use dogs and balaclavas to destroy its workforce . . . if companies are going to improve productivity you are not going to do it by sacking half your workforce."
Patrick worker David Whillas said the company had resorted to its usual "under-handed" tactics despite the workforce giving the productivity improvements requested over the last year.
"It's just like a stab in the back. We have just been through an EBA and now to turn up to work to find out you may not have a job next year," he said.
Mullen said the decision to invest in Port Botany was a "vote of confidence" in the Patrick port division — and not evidence of a company slashing costs because of difficult times.
He said the automated straddle carriers "represent the future of the industry" with Hutchison Ports set to use the technology and DP World likely to "head in the same direction". Patrick has been using the technology in Brisbane since 2005.
The union said it was inevitable Patrick would automate its other container terminals in Melbourne and Fremantle.
Mullen said: "Maybe one day in the future we would automate there [in Melbourne] . . . but right now we don't have any plans."
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