Industrial Relations Minister to meet with DP World logistics representatives

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Industrial Relations Minister Tony Burke is meeting with DP World representatives today -- over the ongoing dispute causing serious delays at port terminals across the country.

Transcript

00:00 This dispute is mainly over pay. So the Maritime Union of Australia is asking for a pay rise

00:07 for 1500 of its workers. The company though says if you take in account back pay, that

00:15 pay rise they're asking for is actually 27% over two years, which is too high. So the

00:21 Maritime Union of Australia members have been taking protected industrial action. They've

00:26 reduced that action to two hour stoppages now. But as you can imagine, this is affecting

00:32 a lot of the containers coming into ports into Australia. And this is having, you know,

00:37 a big impact on businesses across the country. It's impacting both importers and exporters

00:42 of all sorts of goods, but including fresh produce. So you can imagine if you're importing,

00:48 you know, fresh fruit and vegetables that you're selling to events, say, such as Chinese

00:54 New Year, they might not get to them in time now. It also means they perish and the business

01:01 has to wear that cost. It's also affecting a lot of exporters who are exporting products

01:05 such as wine, which is, you know, obviously a time of year when they're exporting this

01:10 product in addition to meat. So it's really having a major impact and they are calling,

01:16 they're among a number of voices that are calling on Federal Minister Tony Burke to

01:21 intervene. I've talked about the, you know, importers being affected. Now that could potentially

01:26 see if this drags on, that could potentially see the prices that consumers pay at the shops

01:31 increase. And that obviously has a big inflation impact. And this is a time where we really

01:36 want the Reserve Bank's been working very hard to try and keep inflation under control.

01:41 So it's really risky if this does push up inflation, because rather than seeing rate

01:46 cuts this year, what you might then see is more rate rises.

01:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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