Author: GPSM

Many clients will be aware of the struggle to find space on the USA to Australia/New Zealand trade at present .

Recent weather events including a heavy snow storm that has swept across the country from the Gulf all the way to the north east corner of USA has hampered pick-ups and deliveries of FCL and LCL shipments since late last week.

Not only have many of the USA East Coast ports and rail systems have been affected by snow drifts and huge traffic delays, a large number of truckers have had to close as well.

Below is a map showing the trucking terminal closures (the red and yellow dots) as a result of icy and snow affected roads being unsafe to drive on. This adds to the existing issues of equipment and driver shortages throughout the industry.

FCL bookings are extremely difficult to obtain since Maersk Line changed their direct service to a transshipment service over Asia.

Masrk were vessel sharing with their associated company Hamburg-SUD on a weekly basis so effectively the USA-ANZ direct services has lost capacity of some 12,000-14000 container slots per week.

The remaining direct carriers, CMA, MSC and Hapag-Lloyd are all overbooked and bookings are now being put out to 6-8 weeks delay as a result of the shortage of space and the continuing unprecented volume of containers moving on the trade lane.

The other transshipment carrers to ANZ over Asia, including YML, Evergreen, COSCO and OOCL are seeing huge volumes still existing on that service despite the closure of factories in Asia for Chinese New Year, however we are now seeing a trickle of bookings to ANZ now being offered by these carriers since they shut down all bookings to ANZ prior to Xmas 2021.

Finally some good news from the Australian waterfront.

This morning we have been advised that the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement between Patrick’s Terminal in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle and the Maritime Union of Australia appears to finally have been negotiated.

Below is the statement issued by Patrick’s Terminals:

“Patrick Terminals can confirm that an in-principle agreement has been reached with the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) for a new 4-year enterprise agreement. The agreement will now need to be voted on by the MUA members before being ratified by the Fair Work Commission.

Patrick Terminals is very pleased with the outcome. The new agreement has achieved the removal of restrictive recruitment conditions and also delivered other much-needed flexibilities for the Patrick operations across all four terminals. Patrick Terminals looks forward to the endorsement of the agreement by the MUA members and four years of industrial stability on our waterfront.

The current vessel berthing delays at Patrick’s Terminals around the coast have been:

• Melbourne – severe congestion and delays up to 10+ days
• Sydney – average delay is around 2.5 days
• Brisbane – some vessel bunching, but overall there is no major delays until early February
• Fremantle – berth free (last week), but vessels starting to bunch again from (the weekend just gone)

It is hoped that the new Enterprise Agreement (when ratified) will be a contributing factor to Patrick Terminals recovering from the current berthing delays and flow-on impacts that these delays have on landside logistics performance”.

Following extensive flooding in South Australia and Western Australia, Pacific National who operate rail services between Australia’s East and West Coasts, have advised that some 400kms of railway rack needs to be replaced on the cross country services.

This has severely disrupted all services and could be some time before the rail line is again open to service.

For those clients affected by the service outage, GPSM are pursuing enquiries with coastal sea operators to try and find a solution to the current delays.

Our team will keep individual clients updated as soon as possible.

Just a reminder that Chinese New Year holidays will commence from 31st January, 2022 until 6th February, 2022 and we ask all clients to ensure they receive shipment documents from suppliers in advance of the break.

Many factories will close for longer periods as most workers will return to their home towns during the holidays.

Trucking services across China are already struggling to cope with the volume of cargo and containers as factories try to move as many orders as possible prior to the holiday period.

Patrick Terminals has lodged an application with the Fair Work Commission to terminate its Enterprise Agreement with the MUA.

The agreement is no longer fit for purpose, as it contains a number of operational restrictions that have limited the ability of Patrick to meet customer requirements at a time of congestion in global supply chains.

Patrick has been negotiating with its employees and the MUA since February 2020 to seek to address these restrictions and has held more than 70 meetings in pursuit of a new enterprise agreement.

The MUA has launched more than 220 industrial actions against Patrick Terminals nationally during the negotiation period. This has intensified recently with further action launched at all four of Patrick’s terminals in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle for the coming days and weeks.

Michael Jovicic, CEO Patrick Terminals said, “Enough is enough. We have presented the MUA with an attractive national offer on top of their already very generous agreement including a 10% pay increase across four years coupled with protections addressing concerns over the use of casuals and job security.

“Negotiations have been ongoing for close to two years and frankly there seems to be no agreement to be had, particularly in Sydney, where the union is still demanding we hire from a selected list of family and friends.

“We have today lodged an application with the FWC for an order terminating our current agreement.

“We are at the end of the road and need to have an agreement with our employees that works for our customers, and that allows us to remain competitive in the future market.”

Terminating the agreement will allow Patrick to recruit and train employees without needing the agreement of the Union and remove any “friends and family” Union imposed restrictions.

“The world has changed, and we need to be able to recruit and promote the best people for the job rather than be hamstrung by antiquated Union-led processes and policies that restrict our business,” Mr Jovicic said.

“Our market share and business operations have suffered due to this relentless industrial campaign by the MUA and their insidious ‘jobs for the boys’ stance. We need to provide our customers with operational certainty and that includes a workable agreement with our employees. Our customers are demanding that we take action to resolve this situation.”

Patrick Terminals has guaranteed not to change leave entitlements, salaries and other rates of pay that are applicable under the Enterprise Agreement for employees for a period of 6 months from the date of any termination order, probably next year.

Patrick Terminals has requested an expedited hearing of this application with the Fair Work Commission.

If you have any questions relating to this notification, please speak to your Patrick commercial representative.

 

Regards,

Patrick Terminals