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          Shipping Stevedoring Port Services Hydrocarbons Diving  May-Jun 2008 
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Campaign to eliminate Manual Twist-Lock OperationsBy Robert Coombs Sydney Branch Secretary
The Union has initiated a campaign to eliminate Manual Twist-lock Operations in our terminals and bulk and general sites. The campaign comes as a result of consistent complaints by our OH&S Committees of the dangerous situations that wharfies expose themselves to when required to work on container tops when manually releasing twist-locks. The OH&S Committee have also raised concerns that some members are ignoring procedures when working in work-cages and not securing themselves effectively when required to leave a cage. This is not withstanding that the whole manual procedure is extremely cumbersome, does not conform to best practice procedure and is not very productive or efficient. The Sydney Branch held a meeting of representatives from all of our OH&S Committees on Wednesday 14 May 2003 and determined to commence with a joint campaign to ensure that all stevedoring companies strictly implement provisions to ensure container top safety is abided by at all times, and also to participate in a campaign to eliminate manual twist-lock operations, in favour of auto twist locks and cones. In working to best achieve the above, the participants decided to initiate the following specific tasks: „Q That the Branch Secretary write to all stevedoring managers and advise them of our campaign and seek their assistance in implementing strict procedures to ensure container top safety. „Q That we seek the assistance of other Branches. „Q That we produce a membership pamphlet that explains procedures to be undertaken in the area. „Q That we produce both a video and written material explaining the elements of our campaign. „Q That we then lobby industrial and political bodies in order to promote our campaign eg AMSA, Work Cover, Australian Chamber of Shipping, NSW Labor Council and shipping companies that still use manual twist-lock operations. Ideally, our campaign will lead to national legislation that outlaws manual twist-locks. The ILWU (Longshoremen West Coast USA) have been able to achieve this and we will be contacting them to get some of their ideas to ensure we are able to achieve the same.
For further information
Public Campaigns: You can view MUA's publicly available campaign information in a variety of ways. Please select one of our public campaigns indexes. |
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This page: http://mua.org.au/campaigns/stevedoring/twistlock.html Site proudly designed and engineered by Social Change Online |
© 2001 Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) |
