Sydney port development may not lead to many jobs, union warns

Members of the International Longshoremen's Association are in Sydney this week to ask questions about the proposed port development.

They want employment for longshoremen, but worry jobs could be few and far between if a container terminal is fullyautomated.

ILA Local 1259 president Peter Gillis, along withMichael Vigneron and James Paylor from the Atlantic District's Philadelphia office, metwith Transportation Minister Geoff MacLellan, the Port of Sydney Development Corporation and others.

"We're concerned that somebody wants to fly a fullyautomated flagship on the East Coast and take the profitsthat usually wind up in the community to some other location," said Paylor.

"If you go fully robotic, where you have machinery and computers performing the work andnot creating the job generation ... the original plan starts to fail what the originalobjectives were, creating jobs."

The mayor of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Cecil Clark, announced plans for the port redevelopment last summer. Last month, the municipality signed an agreement with a Chinese company to design and build a container terminal.

There's been no indication yet whether a fully automated operation is being considered.

'Promises faded'

Vigneron saida fully automated port was developed in Virginia and the community saw few benefits.

"The company came in with a lot of promises: 'We are goingto create a lot of jobs and we're going to knock the socks off of productivity,'" he said.

"They put the fullyautomated terminal in and the promises faded. They didn't create the jobs."

The union mensaidthe Port of Sydney, with its abundance of available land, is a strong contender for a container terminal.Gillis saidthere is potential for a large number ofwell-paying jobs.

"This industry will pay better than we are used to paying because this industry allows for that," he said.

"If we can get solid work goingwith eight-hour shifts, we want to get these young people back home here and we want to get our own guys working so they are working 12months of the year."