Fight to Save KiwiRail Jobs Goes Countrywide: BOP Workers Vote to Picket Arrival of Foreign Built Wagons

The battle to save KiwiRail workers’ jobs at Dunedin’s Hillside workshops has spread across the country.

Rail and Maritime Transport Union members in Tauranga held a mass stop work meeting yesterday and unanimously voted to take direct action to stop the arrival and commissioning of the first batch of overseas built wagons, which are due to arrive imminently.

“Our members are calling upon KiwiRail and the Government to abandon their plans to cut jobs at Hillside and Hutt workshops. There are 40 jobs under threat in Dunedin and another 30 are being targeted in the Hutt. This is a direct consequence of KiwiRail’s decision to buy rolling stock made overseas,” said RMTU National President Aubrey Wilkinson, who works at the Port of Tauranga.

“Yesterday our members in the RMTU Rail and Port branches in Tauranga voted to mount pickets to prevent foreign built rolling stock getting on the track here in New Zealand. We understand that the ship carrying the first batch of overseas built wagons is due to arrive in the Port of Tauranga any day now. We’re not going to let that happen without putting up a fight,” said Aubrey Wilkinson.

“We have the support of our fellow members in the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) and other RMTU branches across the country. We’ll be calling meetings in Port Chalmers and Wellington to hold similar votes as we understand the ship carrying these wagons is also calling at those ports.”

“This is a fight for jobs and skills in New Zealand. 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,” said Aubrey Wilkinson.

“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,” said Aubrey Wilkinson.

Full Text of 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 NZ 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 NZ.

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