Port Otago employees are taking a stand against "aggressive management tactics" they say is threatening the future of the South Island's most significant trade facility.
It comes after a major review prompted by a Newshub investigation found evidence of bullying, intimidation, racism, sexual discrimination and a lack of transparency around decision-making at Lyttelton Port Company (LPC).
More than 100 Port Otago workers across two unions met on Wednesday to call upon management to "abandon their aggressive approach" to industrial relations.
Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) South Island representative John Kerr says the meeting was attended by a workforce who had dealt with challenging times amid the pandemic and want change.
Kerr says Port Otago workers are "no longer prepared to deal with aggressive management attitudes that were out of step with what was required during a vulnerable economic situation".
But it comes to the apparent frustration of Port Otago CEO Kevin Winders who slammed the union's announcement sent out to the media on Wednesday.
Winders said he was disappointed in the unions approach of issuing a "misleading press release" without prior engaging the company.
"Port Otago refutes any allegation of management bullying at Port Otago," he said.
Kerr says it's that approach which is causing "no confidence" in Winders' leadership, and believes a proactive response would be to leave his position.
"I'd like to know how he thinks we're being misleading, under his watch there's a culture of antagonism and disrespect towards his workers and their representatives, there's a culture of bullying by him and his managers, so if he's going to throw accusations around of the press release being misleading, he needs to be more specific."
"He simply has to resign; our membership were really clear that they have no confidence that he will change."
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Kerr believes Winders is "the protagonist", who he says has been in the position too long to be able to say 'well this isn't my doing'.
"It's very much of his doing, relationships have deteriorated since his arrival, so when we renegotiate the collapse of the agreement last year we ended up in an industrial dispute, there was an overtime ban, that got pretty acrimonious, what's clear to us is that since then he's been in the mood for revenge, he's embarked on this campaign of antagonistic approach, and that's having an impact on the workplace, the buck very much stops with him."
He says Port Otago workers claim management is aggressive and antagonistic, and their representatives aren't being treated with any respect.
"There's a degree of mismanagement, so for example, we have a sinking lid on staffing, which is meaning that people are under more pressure to get the job done, that has a job on safety, which in turn has an impact on morale, which in turn has an impact on productivity.
"From our perspective, it's more a question of mismanagement, and a failure to work cooperatively and respectfully with the unions on-site because let's not forget everybody who is frontline on that waterfront is a unionised worker".
Newshub requests for further comment from Winders were denied.
It comes after a major review prompted by a Newshub investigation found evidence of bullying, intimidation, racism, sexual discrimination and a lack of transparency around decision-making at Lyttelton Port Company (LPC).
Newshub's investigation was centred on LPC worker Katrina Hey who took her own life in December 2019. It went on to expose accusations of widespread bullying, favouritism and 'old school' conduct before prompting two inquiries, with their results released on Wednesday morning.
The independent review into workplace culture, led by Maria Dew QC, has highlighted a culture of fear among workers at the South Island's biggest port.
The results identified eight key factors contributing to high levels of distress, health impacts, loss of confidence and resignations including normalised offensive behaviour, communication breakdowns, 'them and us' barriers and management voids.
Of the 97 current and former employees or contractors, union representatives, LPC directors and executives employed from January 2017 onwards, it was revealed:
81 percent reported bullying concerns
90 percent of non-European interviewees said racism was an issue
Employees had been forced out of jobs because of racism
42 percent of women reported sexist behaviour
31 percent of men reported seeing sexist behaviours by other men towards women
65 percent raised concern about some form of unfair selection or work allocation
The report included quotes from interviews made by participants, selected because they represent themes heard over and over. These included:
"There is an underlying sort of current of casual sexism, racism, homophobia there and it's difficult to pinpoint specific occasions because they just happen so frequently"
"I was so shattered by this bullying I had to leave, but I wanted to speak up. I was made to feel I had no professional skills, it wrecked my health"
"It's pretty regular that female cargo handlers' slightly higher-pitched voices are mocked over the radio publicly"
"You get mocking of ethnic accents, particularly Asian"
"The regular insult is 'queer c*nt' or 'homo', people don't realise it's homophobic"
"I am in the union but not pro-union, there is a lot of self-entitled behaviour and they are getting away with it. This culture breeds the bullying attitude"
The common bullying themes included a "highly-aggressive approach by both senior management and unions", managers failing to deal with abusive and hurtful language, staff laughing at offensive and belittling comments, and persistent negative and aggressive conduct.
The review began in July 2020 and was completed in November after Newshub exposed claims that bullying was 'rife' and 'the tip of the iceberg' of issues within the company following Katrina Hey's daughter speaking out about her mum's experiences during her seven-year employment.
