Cruise ships could feel impact of overtime ban

FRIDAY, AUGUST 12: The overtime ban by dockworkers will play havoc with the shipping schedules into Hamilton.

Shipping companies say it couldn’t have come at a worse time and the knock-on effect will get worse the longer it remains in force. The ban will impact on all three container ships that service the island as well as the Veendam cruise ship in the next few days alone.

Yesterday afternoon as the workers left Hamilton dock at 4:30pm after spending the day unloading the Bermuda Islander the Somers Isles sailed into Bermuda.

The dockworkers had already gone home by the time she arrived at 5:30pm so Stevedoring management helped bring her alongside.

Under normal circumstances workers would have worked through the night to re-load the Islander and unload the Somers Isles. But due to the overtime ban the Islander will leave today at 10:30am with only half of her usual load on board.

That will set back the unloading of the Somers Isles and her supplies, which would have been on the grocery store shelves today, will probably not make it until tomorrow morning now.

The Somers Isles was due to leave later this week before the ban. But now she will stuck in Hamilton until next Tuesday or Wednesday as the dock workers won’t have time to load up the export and empty containers she has to take back to the U.S. before the end of work on Friday.

Meanwhile the Oleander is usually unloaded on Sunday night when she arrives in the capital.But this work will only begin on Monday morning due to the overtime ban. She will depart later than planned on Tuesday afternoon – but if the workers lose a day to rain or equipment failure – she too could be put days behind schedule.

And it’s not just container ships that will be affected.

Dock workers will not be working in their lunch hour which means that the departure of the Veendam has had to be put back a quarter of an hour to 1pm to ensure the workers are on hand to help untie her. At present no one is sure what will happen when she returns to Bermuda on Tuesday. She normally arrives in Hamilton at 6pm after spending the day off St George’s. But there will be no workers on the docks at this time so she may have to bypass St George’s altogether.

Joe Simas from Meyer Freight told the Bermuda Sun: “This ban has already caused a lot of problems with the scheduling and it is only going to get worse. The ripple effect will get greater and greater the longer it goes on for. There is also a lot of uncertainty as to how we will manage if it goes on for a while. We will do everything we can to make sure our customers get their products as soon as possible but it is out of our hands.

Howard Pitcher from Bermuda Container Lines said the overtime ban could not have come at a worse time. He added: “The industry is already struggling with container volumes down 30 per cent. The Oleander should be able to remain on schedule for next week, but if anything happens to delay the unloading then we are in trouble.

“There is no room for error and often with items like salads there is only a couple of days margin before the produce goes off. Everyone will be hurt if the ships fall behind in their schedule. We will try to keep the impact to a minimum but there is only so much we can do.

“You see over Christmas how quickly the shelves in the supermarkets get empty – if this ban continues for several weeks we could be in real trouble.”