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OPINION: Palaamo Kalati, a father of seven with a “big grin and even bigger heart” was crushed to death under a container.
Laboom Midnight Dyer, dad to toddler Noah, fell 11 metres while driving a straddle carrier, which pick up and carry freight.
Leslie Gelberger, an ocean swimmer, teacher and father of two, was fatally struck by a speeding pilot boat.
This is the grim roll call of deaths over three years at the country’s biggest port, in central Auckland.
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Stuff
L-R: Laboom Midnight Dyer, Palaamo Kalati and Leslie Gelberger died as the result of accidents at Ports of Auckland.
For Dyer’s death, the port was fined $540,000. Judge Evangelos Thomas found: “There was a systemic failure to install and maintain a culture of safety and compliance”.
A $424,000 fine for the company, and $8400 for one of its skippers, came from Gelberger’s death. The court heard Ports of Auckland’s vessels breached speed limits on 99 per cent of their journeys.
Maritime NZ is investigating Kalati’s death.
Initial inquiries have revealed a crane driver was not made aware of the presence of workers nearby, and that the port was not ensuring compliance with health and safety procedures.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
A stevedore working the nightshift at Ports of Auckland boards a ship from Asia for inspection before offloading cargo.
So a report released last week that laid bare “systemic problems” at the busy port came as little surprise.
But it makes for distressing reading. It paints a picture of a workplace driven by profit, where the safety of its workers came second to productivity.
Working on the docks is physical and perilous, swarming with rolling, large machinery. High above their heads, heavy containers are suspended from cranes.
Lashers – who secure the containers for heavy seas with steel rods weighing 30kg – manoeuvre between stacks of boxes, standing with a drop of several stories to the water below.
Each week around a dozen ships pull up at the wharves and cranes that tower above Waitematā Harbour.
The stevedores and drivers work feverishly to keep New Zealand’s regional economy connected to the global market. They shift freight to make sure we are supplied with imported essentials.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Up to a dozen ships call at the Ports of Auckland each week, bringing goods from all corners of the world.
While the rest of us sheltered during the Covid lockdown, the 1300-tonne cranes kept shuttling back and forward, hoisting containers on and off the massive vessels.
These wharfies are in the engine room of our economy, handling roughly 30 per cent of the country’s trade.
And they feel abandoned. The report revealed 39 per cent of around 670 employees felt that workers take the blame after an accident. A quarter felt bosses cared about productivity, not workers. Most disturbingly, six percent felt they would be punished for reporting a safety issue.
Alden Williams/Stuff
Ports of Auckland chief executive Tony Gibson said reading the health and safety review made him “feel sick”.
The report lays much of the blame with management. It suggests a “requirement on the chief executive [Tony Gibson] to prioritise safety over profit”.
But Gibson cannot be the man to implement the review’s forty-plus recommendations.
He has presided over a toxic culture of mistrust and reckless greed that led to three tragic, preventable deaths.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Three deaths have left a dark cloud over Ports of Auckland.
And yet, at a press conference on Tuesday, he claimed not to know about the problems.
Ports of Auckland’s own figures show that between 2016 and 2020, there were almost 200 recordable injuries at the port. After at least the first death, he should have been alive to the risks.
Gibson’s position is not tenable. Firstly, because he failed in a moral obligation to protect staff.
Secondly, the man who oversaw “a culture of retribution” cannot be entrusted to implement an adequate health and safety regime.
The workforce has lost faith in his leadership and the Maritime Union has publicly called for his resignation.
Fines were paid, but no-one was held accountable. It’s time for Gibson to step up and do that. But who is going to make him? Auckland Mayor Phil Goff is powerless to do anything but change out the board.
The response from workplace relations and safety minister Michael Wood was weak, warning the port is on notice, but not actually doing anything.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
A stevedore operates a crane at Ports of Auckland.
There is an even sadder backdrop to the stories of these three men.
Since 2012, there have been 657 workplace deaths in New Zealand. That is six in every month. And the tally would be even higher if truck crash deaths were counted.
Today marks five years since the Health and Safety at Work Act came into force – a legacy of the Pike River Mine disaster. These reforms were supposed to keep us safe, but 388 deaths have occurred since then.
Our work-related fatal injury record is poor when compared with other OECD countries; twice as high as Australia and four times that of the UK.
That’s not hard to explain when even local government-owned companies, like Ports of Auckland, have been allowed to treat lives like tradable commodities.
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