Sexist MUNZ Keeps Blokes Only Club

A commenter on The Stranded started this argument to which I responded:

Frank Macskasy is well known on the net. I will leave it to readers to look him up. But he's the sort of "cook your own fucking eggs" comrade who likes to put women in their place and remind them how they got to where they are. Oops you know because he doesn't mean offence and all.

Frank however does raise one good point. What have Unions done for women?

Let me tell you what MUNZ (Maritime Union of New Zealand) have done for women down at the Ports of Auckland.

Place barriers in front of them.

I reference an article in December for which Pressdisplay has the print only section here with this addition in the print version.

POAL want to hire more female stevedores stating they are suited to the part-time "casual"nature of the work the POAL wish to promote in terms of flexibility. In the article it states there is only ONE female wharfie out of 300.

I have had it confirmed today there are in fact TWO female stevedores in a staff of 212 (.9%). Across the POAL the proportion of women is around 10%. No big business would ever get away with such imbalance in gender statistics.

What makes the job unappealing to women currently is the Union insisting that "lashing" is a core function of the stevedores and where they have to start training. This is an example of lashing.

Of course the LAST thing the blokes on the wharf want are chicks working alongside them. No more titty talk during breaks. It is all testosterone and backs to the wall stuff down on the wharf. Imagine what would happen if an openly homosexual man turned up applying for a job? Or a current stevedore was known to secretly have a history in such?

The Union is effectively keeping highly paid and lucrative stevedoring, a good k1w1 blokes only zone.

Even the MUNZ National Officials and Staff is a cock-fest. In Auckland a lady gets to run the office. That's it.

Strange then that a woman Helen "Clean-up" Kelly has been called into help the inept MUNZ and President Garry Parsloe. Even left winger Mickey Savage has called MUNZ's PR efforts "poor".

Clean-up Kelly you will all recall is a Hobbit Hater in her prior existence. Yet she is now effectively both in cricketing terms and in reality the "third woman on the Wharf" coming in where MUNZ blokes have cocked-up everything in the slips.

Clean-up is spinning like a top on that most social of mediums - Facebook. And a massive material dump of silliness that mainstream media ignored because it was TL;DR (too long didn't read).

The question I ask of Helen "Clean Up" Kelly is:

How can she defend a Union in a dispute where less than 1% of the workforce are female and it is the Union itself through restrictive practices that are impeding the progress of employing more women?

So the answer to Frank Macskasy on what has the Maritime Union done for women?

Stuff all.

I can't wait until Darien Fenton chirps up and defends this Union.