Rail workers will picket Port of Tauranga gates when new China-built railway wagons are expected to be unloaded there this month.

The wagons are to be discharged from the heavy lift ship Palembang, expected at the Port of Tauranga on July 14, after first calling at Auckland and Port Chalmers.

Rail and Maritime Transport Union president Aubrey Wilkinson says the protest planned at the Port of Tauranga is about doing 'the right thing for New Zealand”.

Rail and Maritime Transport Union members in Tauranga will take industrial action to stop the arrival and commissioning of the first batch of the overseas-built wagons.

The wagons shipment follows the arrival at Tauranga in November last year of Chinese built locomotives, which were discharged without industrial protest.

'To be fair, we have never built locomotives in New Zealand,” says RMTU president Aubrey Wilkinson.

'We have maintained them, stripped them down, but we have never constructed them from the ground up.

'To say that we can build them is true, but the fist locomotive we built was a steam engine and the last locomotive we built was a steam engine.”

KiwiRail's decision to import the wagons instead of building them at the Hillside and Hutt workshops threatens 40 jobs in Dunedin and 30 in Lower Hutt, says Aubrey.

'Our members are calling upon KiwiRail and the government to abandon their plans to cut jobs at Hillside and Hutt workshops.”

The rail and marine transport workers have the support of Maritime Union of New Zealand workers and other RTMU workers across the country, says Aubrey.

They will be calling meetings at the other New Zealand ports where the Palembang is expected to call.

'This is a fight for jobs and skills in New Zealand,” says Aubrey.

'The government is the shareholder of KiwiRail – they can, and they should, direct KiwiRail to stop buying rolling stock overseas.

'We have the expertise to build the wagons here and the flow-on benefits to the New Zealand economy are huge.
'Hundreds of jobs and dozens of businesses depend on work generated by our rail workshops in Dunedin and the Hutt. This work sustains our communities. All we're asking the government to do is listen to us and to do the right thing for New Zealand.”

The wagons are expected to have to be trucked off the Port of Tauranga property to a rail siding possibly at Norke Skog, where they will be commissioned, says Aubrey.

'They are not permitted on the railway until they have been certificated and passed,” says Aubrey.

'They have to go through this commissioning phase, and warrant of fitness phase. There are a lot of government departments involved as well as our own members.”

The resolutions:

This meeting of RMTU Bay of Plenty Branch:

• Directs KiwiRail to abandon its plans to slash jobs at its Hillside and Hutt engineering plants and to invest in the future of Hillside, Hutt and Rail Engineering in New Zealand with a view to securing and creating high skill, high wage jobs that help build and expand a sustainable rail network
• To legislate for a government procurement policy that ensures all SOEs and other government owned and controlled entities take into account the interests of the wider New Zealand economy and society in the purchase of goods and services.
• That this combined meeting endorses the call from the Waikato and Bay of Plenty Rail Branches and the Bay of Plenty Port Branch to organise a picket led by our KiwiRail members at Tauranga when the CNR built wagons arrive.
• That this combined meeting calls upon the ITF to ban all CNR built wagons that are destined for New Zealand.