Port on the edge
New CEO says pics of unharnessed contractors at dangerous heights ‘bloody scary’
Fresh evidence of contract workers at the Ports of Auckland not wearing harnesses at dangerous heights has scared and “disturbed” its new chief executive.
And revelations a stevedore lost a leg have added to a run of serious accidents at the port.
Workers at the Ports of Auckland site said they have ongoing safety concerns after the fourth death there in the past five years occurred on April 19.
Atiroa Tuaiti, a stevedore for contracting company Wallace Investments, died after a fall from numerous stacked containers onto the deck of a Singaporean ship he was unloading.
Sources have also told the Herald on Sunday that a worker from Wallace Investments lost a leg in a Ports of Auckland accident last year.
Wallace Investments did not respond to a request for comment.
Another stevedore from a different contracting company said that they have worked at the port numerous times over the past six months and had never worn a harness while working at heights.
“What happened [Tuaiti’s death] should never have happened if safety procedures were followed,” said the stevedore who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“‘Fall from height’ would have been prevented if there were lines/ ropes attached to harness.
“I did the same kind of work numerous times before and never have we had any ropes/lines to anchor ourselves to when working on heights.
“In other words, we only wear the harness without having a rope/line attached to catch us when there’s a fall.” Photos supplied to the Herald show stevedores from the contracting company working at significant heights without harnesses.
New Ports of Auckland chief executive Roger Gray took over the top job this year after the resignation of Tony Gibson in May last year.
Gibson had come under intense media scrutiny and union pressure to vacate the role after the release of the a port review by Construction Health and Safety New Zealand (CHASNZ) in March 2021.
The CHASNZ report found: “Elements of the workforce who undertake high risk roles (mainly terminal operations) believe that executive management prioritises profitability and productivity over health and safety.”
While only two months into the role after moving from his position as chief executive of Lyttelton Port Company, Gray said the company’s own staff would not partake in such risky behaviour.
Gray described the photos shown to him by the Herald on Sunday as “terrible”.
“What I can say is . . . you won’t see that from our staff, okay? When we work at height you’re harnessed or you’re in a cage or there’s a barrier.
“So you won’t see that in our operations. If one of my managers was to see that, I am confident that they would stop the operation. They would go and intervene.
“I don’t know the context of those photographs but they’re bloody scary and I don’t think they’re acceptable,” he said.
“I found those pretty disturbing photographs.”
Gray added that if one of his company’s staff witnessed unharnessed work practices from a contracting company on the port site, there would be consequences for not reporting it.
“That would be a conversation I would be having with my staff member about their lack of leadership and safety. Because the standard you walk by is the standard you accept,” Gray said.
However, another worker at the port who contacted the Herald after Tuaiti’s death said they had also seen stevedores working at fatal heights and found it “absolutely crazy”.
The worker at the port also supplied photos to the Herald on Sunday from February this year in which stevedores without harnesses can be seen on three stacked shipping containers on an edge even further elevated from the water.
The worker had been at the port years earlier and witnessed similar behaviour.
“I was once again shocked that years later it seems no changes have been made to how these ships are offloaded. I find it absolutely crazy that these guys are allowed to climb on top of the containers without fall restraint,” the worker said.
They believed that in the construction industry, a site would be shut down by Worksafe immediately if someone was seen working on top of a roof without a fall restraint or other protection.
Referencing the supplied photo, the worker said they and their colleagues, who were not stevedores, couldn’t believe they were allowed to operate in this way.
“As you can see from the photo the operative . . . has zero fall protection,” they said.
The source believed the port was ultimately responsible for work that happened on its site.
Gray said the laws around a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) on the port site is a “quite complex piece of law”.
“Wallace Investments is an independent company as are [other contractors] operating on the port as is MPI [Ministry for Primary Industries] who operate on the port as does Customs, as do all these organisations,” Gray said.
“Do we have a responsibility? We do. As the primary PCBU, of person conducting business undertakings, we have a responsibility to ensure people are working safely and effectively. But we can’t tell them how to do their job.
“But what we can do is we can work with them to understand that they’ve got a plan on how they’re doing it. That we can check on occasions and audit that people are behaving the way they say they’re going to, so work is done rather than just work is imagined.”
The Herald on Sunday has also spoken to port sources that claim time pressure is placed on contracted stevedores from their employers to keep up a high level of productivity so that ships will choose to berth in Auckland over Tauranga.
Mark Cairns retired as Port of Tauranga’s chief executive last year and was open about the competition between the two ports.
“Yeah, there is [competition] and for the 16 years I was at the ports it was something the Ministry of Transport benchmarked,” Cairns said.
“So naturally you would always strive to be the most productive port but we would always play [it by] the safety toolbox. It would come from my mouth as well that productivity is important but at every town hall meeting or safety toolbox meeting that safety comes first.”
While Gray acknowledged “money is important, we’ve got to run a business” he was adamant his messaging to staff has been clear since he arrived that productivity is not to be at the cost of safety.
“I’m not concerned about the competition with another port. Safety takes primacy over everything. If in doubt, stop, it doesn’t matter if we’re late if it’s unsafe,” Gray said.
“Yes, we will occasionally get pressure from a shipping agent, ‘turn the ship, turn the ship, we want to get going’ because they were late into the port and they want to catch up. Too bad, so sad, we’re doing it safely.
A source within the Maritime NZ Union said the revenue to a New Zealand port for docking was more than $100,000 for a large ship.
“So we get all this duplication of assets and everyone’s competing, and it’s sort of a race to the bottom a little bit in terms of wages and conditions, and part of those conditions is how you do things with health and safety,” the source told the Herald on Sunday.
Industry practices are currently being investigated at New Zealand’s 13 largest ports at the request of Workplace Relations Minister and Transport Minister Michael Wood.
Wood made the request for the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) to investigate after a worker death at Lyttelton port just six days after the death of 26-year-old Tuaiti in Auckland.
Investigations by Maritime NZ, Worksafe and Wallace Investments are also under way into the death of Tuaiti.
Gray said he and the port is cooperating fully with the TAIC review of ports operations across NZ and has “100 per cent” support for what Wood was doing.
“How are we complying with it? One, I’ve already met with TAIC, invited them in. Had the conversations with Maritime NZ and Worksafe, they were already in doing a review of critical risks. We’re supporting Maritime NZ’s investigations.
“And whatever outcomes come out of the review that TAIC do and the others do, we’ll implement.”