Incident at port fails to distract talks

Negotiations between Ports of Auckland’s management and Maritime Union representatives might be progressing, but workers’ tensions are apparently still high on the wharves.

A Ports of Auckland worker allegedly threatened a fellow worker with a knife, resulting in a police call-out on Tuesday.

A police spokeswoman confirmed that officers attended a call-out at the central Auckland port at 7.30 on Tuesday morning, although they could not locate a weapon and did not make any arrests.

Neither the port company nor the union would confirm the identity of those involved nor whether they were union or non-union workers.

The person who was believed to be the aggressor was given a warning by police.

Ports of Auckland said it considered the incident an internal matter.

Both the company and union were unwilling to let the incident cloud the progress that has been made on their longrunning and bitter industrial dispute through the Employment Relations Authority’s ‘‘facilitation’’ process.

Ports of Auckland let locked-out workers back onto the wharves early last month but is still intent on negotiat- ing a collective agreement ithat gives it a more ‘‘flexible’’ workforce.

Maritime Union president Garry Parsloe said he had heard about an altercation but had not looked into it and was focusing on progressing talks with the company.

He said the content of the facilitation talks was confidential but they had now moved onto some workshops around rosters and flexibility issues.

A Ports of Auckland spokeswoman said the company’s focus was also on the facilitation and said the alleged threat would be dealt with by the port’s operations management.