Dockworkers at Port Halvern called off a planned 72-hour strike early this morning after marathon talks produced a two-year pay deal, lifting the threat of a shutdown at the country’s busiest freight gateway at the height of the shipping season.
The agreement, reached at 2.40am after nineteen hours at the negotiating table, delivers an 8.4 per cent rise over two years, a $1,200 one-off payment, and — the sticking point until the final session — a guaranteed staffing floor for the port’s semi-automated berth.
“Our members are not against machines. They are against being deleted by them,” said Sella Brack, general secretary of the Dockworkers’ Union, calling the staffing floor “the first of its kind at any Accord port”.
The port authority, which had chartered diversion capacity at Ostrele in case of a walkout, put the cost of a three-day stoppage at $90m in delayed freight. Chief executive Goran Malis said the deal “prices peace fairly” and confirmed no scheduled sailings were lost.
The settlement also clears industrial-relations air ahead of the port’s newly approved $2.4bn expansion, whose construction phase will treble the terminal’s workforce. Ratification ballots close on Tuesday; union officials expect “an emphatic yes”.