Newcastle Branch Report, by Robert Ashton
Monthly meetings It was disappointing that we did not get a quorum at the Newcastle branch for our January meeting. As with the attack on our profession we need to be strong and this means uniting together to fight the forces that are working against us. We should all know by now that the last Tuesday of the month is the day the AIMPE hold their monthly members meeting and in Newcastle we try not to drag our meeting out and usually it only takes a couple of hours of your time. Remember this is your profession, guard it well and fight against it being diluted.
problems with the change of shift pattern how- ever
it did not
agree with the other shift en- gineer (Scot) Clive Rich- ardson who pre- ferred the 12 to 12 pat- tern. The company broke the shifts up to help fix
about engineering and the problems they have encountered, mind you, so do I.
V a n
Above, members hard hat adorned with AIMPE stickers. Below, split hopper barge HAM 350
the congestion of changing the crew of all the vessels at the same time. It has been sug- gested that mem- bers might want to change to a vessel where the pattern is more suitable to them.
Another small split hopper visited was the Herron, engineers being engineers nearly always like to talk
Dredging in Gladstone As I am one of the officials look- ing after the dredging industry I visited Gladstone and some of the vessels working there. The first one I visited was the 586 which is a small split hopper. The second vessel visited was the 350 again another small split hopper. This vessel had changed it’s shift pat- tern from 6 to 6 to 12 to 12. The first engineer I spoke with Steve Chitty, pictured above, had no
On Watch March 2012 page 32
Oord has informed us that the backhoe dredge the Simson suffered a major breakdown and will be going to dock so will finish on the Gladstone project,” It’s future is unknown”.
I attended the Marina in Gladstone on the Monday night and Tuesday morning; this is where the launches take the personnel to and from some of the vessels. Although there is propaganda that the MUA is taking over I took a photo of one of our proud member’s hard hat from Dredging International who had our stickers all over it. NON SIBI SED OMNIBUS.
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