Southern NSW Branch

The Southern New South Wales Branch covers over 600 members from Port Kembla to Eden working in towage, stevedoring, diving, ports services, maintenance and marine operations, as well as seafaring in the blue water, offshore oil and gas, hydrocarbon and dredging industries.

Our Branch has a long and proud history of supporting workers' rights locally, nationally and internationally through strong political and industrial actions.  The most renowned is the now legendary Pig Iron Dispute of 1938, also known as the Dalfram dispute — a 3 months stoppage in which wharfies of this branch took a moral stand by refusing to load pig iron for delivery to the war machine of Imperial Japan.   More recently we had the Capo Noli dispute of 2007 when members and community supporters set up a “peaceful assembly” to prevent a foreign crew from doing stevedoring work.  The SNSW Branch has also proudly taken a stand, during national disputes over job safety and workers' rights.

Traditionally the BHP/Bluescope steelworks has been the major driver for the industry in Port Kembla being a hub for the blue water dry bulk cargo fleet and providing the steel cargoes and bulk imports for the stevedoring operations.  More recently port expansion has established car imports as another key component of the port throughput.

With further expansions now planned for the outer harbour the future for the Branch is looking very positive.