CLIENT ADVISORY: DP World Australia and MUA Enterprise Agreement Dispute Ends

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The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and stevedoring company DP World Australia have reached an ‘in-principle agreement’ on a new enterprise deal for its workers.

With this agreement the MUA has withdrawn all industrial action at their Australian terminals and the DP World stevedores will return to work. It is expected that the various wharves will revert to full eight hour shifts immediately, after four months of work bans and rolling strikes.  The new workplace agreement will require endorsement by MUA membership at DP World.

What We Know

• DP World Australia is a major port operator, managing container terminals in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle for up to 40% of Australia’s maritime freight.
• The MUA asked for a 16 per cent wage increase over two years for DP World Australia workers.
• The industrial dispute between the parties resulted in a series of rolling strike and work bans organised by the MUA over the past four months, since the pre-existing workplace deal expired in September last year.
• The dispute saw some vessels experiencing up to ten days of delays in berthing, hampering importers' ability to swiftly bring their goods to market. The dispute exacerbated challenges for exporters and importers, significantly impacted the productivity and competitiveness of Australia's ports and sparked an increase in the operator’s charges.

What's Next

As port operations begin a return to normality in coming weeks, it is unknown how long it will take to clear the backlog of around 50,000 containers across the four DP World wharves in Fremantle, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

SEKO are continuing to closely monitor the return to full operations by the stevedore and are working with impacted customers and transport partners to mitigate the impact of any residual cargo schedule delays. If you have any questions about your freight shipments, please contact your SEKO representative directly.