On the edge

The MUA is campaigning to eliminate manual twistlock work in Australian terminals. A Sydney Branch initiative, the aim is to outlaw the old technology which once required waterside workers to perilously clamber around on top of stacks 6 high to secure boxes.
Safety regulations now require this work to be done from a cage.
Members on OH&S committees however have raised the alarm that some workers ignore safety and leave work cages without securing themselves whilechasing the bonus.
A meeting of representatives from all committees have initiated a joint Union/Company Campaign to ensure safety on the job until ships using manual twistlocks are denied access to Australian ports

Midnight, PORT BOTANY: Alan Galvin, Tony Sitnikoski and Alan Vukicevic climb into the cage and are lifted into the air, swinging gently into the cold, dark drizzle of the night sky over the stacks of containers six high on deck. Hovering above the liner vessel Bunga Teratai they take in the million dollar views from ocean horizon inland to the city skyscrapers.

From this height the container terminal looks more like a kid's meccano set. Straddles jerk their way noisily back and forth between the stacks on the wharf, dropping each box one by one below the crane.

Metal boxes thump into place on top of each other on the ship's deck. Crane operator Frank Bostick peers between his feet through the glass floor of his cabin above the stack, manoeuvring the multi million dollar portainer with a precision that swings each box into place before dropping so all four one inch container pegs clamp into the tiny holes of the twistlock. First go. All from 70 feet up.

Frank Bostick is one of the best operators on the wharves.

Another row complete, Alan hooks up his harness and clambers onto the spotlit metal stage of container tops. The first row they work unhindered by cage or harness. But two to six high and the cliff face of containers towers over deck, wharves and ocean. Without the harness one wrong step or a slip on the now wet metal could mean death.

Tony's job is to drop each two kilo twistlock into the container corners ready for the next tier of boxes to fit securely on top.

His workmates throw the two kilo locks onto the container. One wrong throw and someone could get hurt -- safety helmets have been known to crack in two like coconuts under the momentum of a propelled or falling lock. Shoulders snap.

People have died doing this job. Like Melbourne wharfie Mick Corbett who disappeared over the edge of a stack and fell into a ship's hold back in 1998 - a week before his retirement.

Now workers are required to work from the cage or wear the harness once the stack gets two high.

But it's back breaking work on the Bunga. Not all ships are so perilous or labour intensive.

This is one of the Malaysian flagged fleet. Bunga means 'flower' and sounds just as gentle in the native tongue. But in the Australian wharfie vernacular it explodes on the tongue like a four letter word.

The Bunga is hated on the Australian waterfront, not just because of the damage it did to the Great Barrier Reef when it grounded off Cairns two years back. And it's not just because it was on a notorious continuous voyage permit issued by the minister for transport to white ant Australian shipping. It's because its owners have yet to invest in upgrading the liner vessel so that the backbreaking and death defying manual labour Alan and his best mate Tony are doing under the careful supervision and example of their team leader this cold, damp evening just would not be necessary.

Both the union and the employers would like the Bunga and all ships like it outlawed from Australian ports as they are in the US.

"The Bungas are the worst of the lot," said Alan. "You've got to do a lot of cage work. You have to do about four or five trips. It's a hazard. I'd love to ban them, love to get rid of them."

Supervisor John Gallagher agrees: "It's not just that these bloody things are manual twistlocks," he says, snatching a rusting lump of steel from the box. "They must have got them all at a second hand shop. Some twist left to unlock, some twist right. So you think you've unlashed the cargo and the lifts get underway when you find one of the bastards is still locked to the deck.

"Either that or when the ship sails into heavy seas, boxes end up in the drink.

"Even working to safety regulations is backbreaking. Squatting and stretching your hand through the cage to lock the containers in place is not easy work. And the harness makes the job cumbersome."

New technology does away with most of the dangers, speeds up the work and is less arduous. With semi automatic twistlocks the bulk of the job is done on the ground. Once the boxes are lifted into place on board, stevedoring workers can simply latch them into place using a rod or lashing bar from the deck. Four to six high stacks and the work is done swinging from a cage. But not by hand. Again a prod with a steel bar locks the boxes together securely.

That's why the Union is now campaigning to eliminate manual twist lock work in Australian terminals.

"About 50 per cent of our work is with automatic twistlocks," said Patrick OH&S committee member Bob Lee. "And ships like the Bunga have gone back a whole shift, so most people must be working to safety regulations. But there's some hard heads out there still doing the wrong thing."

"Automatic twistlocks are going to be the most beneficial to us," says committee member Chris Watson. "All the work is done in the gangway on the wharves.

"We've been pretty lucky, we haven't had a serious accident here yet -- but there have been incidents where people have been injured by falling twistlocks or fallen while doing the wrong thing like climbing up the bars on container doors. One bloke fell and landed with one leg either side of a bar and copped a groin injury. Trouble is people have been walking around on cargo for years. Old habits die hard."

Less so across the bay at P&O, where safety committee member Dean Sampson says container top safety is now ingrained in the workforce.

"We've got a safety regime in place here," said Dean. "You use a ladder to get up to the container corner. The proper go is to put a ladder to each corner. That's how the code is written. But our blokes do jump up on the one high and run around. Anything above that it's cage work. You don't get out of the cage, harness or no harness.

"If you do have to exit the cage because you have a busted twistlock you get out on the driver's side -- and only after the cage has been landed and only when you have a harness on. I'd rather have a strain from working in the cage than my brain spilled all over the deck."

Dean says there's been no major falls off boxes at CTAL in the six to eight years he's been there, but there have been people hurt by falling twistlocks.

"We've have twistlocks spat out of boxes," he said. "We've had a twistlock spit out and hit a bloke on the side of the head a few years back. He no longer works in the industry because of it. It was a pretty bad injury. The twistlock split open his head and nearly broke his neck it hit him that hard. That's what comes from lashing and loading in the same area. We banned that after the accident. We don't work either side of where they are loading. While the portainer crane is working on a row that whole cell is out of bounds. What happens on other jobs is that as soon as the cranes have done the second tier they start lashing and follow the crane. That's dangerous."

Members on Sydney OH&S committees have also raised the alarm about some workers ignoring safety and leaving work cages without securing themselves to chase the bonus. Members have been photographed on top of containers six high (see this years SERF annual report).

The Sydney Branch held a meeting of representatives from all OH&S committees n May to initiate the joint campaign to ensure safety on the job while pushing to outlaw the manual twistlocks.

Branch Secretary Robert Coombs has written to all stevedoring managers advising them of the union campaign. He is also seeking the support of other branches.

The union will be lobbying bodies such as AMSA, WorkCover, the Australian Chamber of Shipping, NSW Labor Council, governments and shipping companies which still use manual twist lock operations. And the branch has a $30,000 grant from WorkSafe, which will go towards production of a safety video and other campaign material.

The aim is to have national legislation in place so ships like the Bunga won't be allowed into Australian ports until they've had an upgrade. This is what the ILWU achieved on the West Coast of the USA.

The campaign has the full backing of the employers P&O and Patrick. Manual operations are cumbersome, slowing productivity to a snails pace. Not just a threat to life and limb.