300 new rail wagons must be built at home

Media Release: Rail and Maritime Transport Union
Tuesday November 9, 2010

300 new rail wagons must be built at home

Rail workers want to make sure that the economic and employment benefits of the construction job for 300 new rail wagons stays in New Zealand, and is not lost overseas, their union said today.

Expressions of interest close this week for a project labelled ‘Design, Manufacture, Test and Delivery of 300 Container Flat Top Wagons’, advertised on the Government Electronic Tenders Service (GETS).

Rail and Maritime Transport Union General Secretary Wayne Butson said that rail workers were keen for the work to be done at the KiwiRail workshops in Lower Hutt and Dunedin, where many similar wagons had been built previously.

Mr. Butson said he would hope that the government had the same enthusiasm for keeping rail workers’ jobs as it did for keeping The Hobbit and other film production in New Zealand.

“Clearly the government is willing to sign cheques and make changes to employment law for an American corporate to keep jobs here. This was in contrast with its unwillingness in May this year to back a local build of the electric multiple units for the Auckland rail network.”

Wayne Butson said it was silly for Kiwirail to tender a job from one part of the business, which could easily be carried out by another part of the Kiwirail business.

“The irony for us is that under private ownership the workshops flourished as the owners saw the benefit of spending money internally whereas the nationalised rail company appears to only want to spend its taxpayer sourced money in Asia.”

“KiwiRail’s tendering rules clearly need to be changed to preference a local build of these wagons. We are hopeful for a good response in Parliament to Clare Curran’s Kiwi Jobs Bill, to make it clear for crown entities like KiwiRail that buying local must always be the first option where possible,” Wayne Butson said.

ENDS

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