The Maritime Union of Australia is demanding a 28-hour week on full pay for wharfies affected by DP World's plan to roll out remote-operated cranes, driverless container vehicles and AI rostering software across its terminals in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle. The claim, made in a union statement on July 3 and reported internationally this week, puts a number on what the union calls the price of automating the docks.
"If DP World wants AI and automation, then they must pay the social dividend," the union said. "The new technology doesn't have to cost our members their jobs or put their livelihoods at risk just so a terminal operator can boost profits." Wharfies currently work weeks believed to be between 32 and 35 hours depending on location, according to the BBC's reporting of the claim.
DP World, owned by the Dubai government, handles about 40 per cent of Australia's container trade, part of a global operation spanning 84 countries and roughly a tenth of world container traffic. The company has begun deploying AI tools for shift scheduling and plans remote-control cranes and automated transport vehicles at its Australian terminals. It has not directly answered the 28-hour claim; its standing response, issued earlier this year, is that it is "a long-term investor in Australia's trade and logistics infrastructure" whose operations "support thousands of jobs".
The union's numbers come from a report it commissioned with the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research, launched at Parliament House in late March. The report estimates up to 1,000 jobs (more than 60 per cent of the wharfie and maintenance workforce) are exposed to the automation program, and claims DP World Australia has paid no corporate income tax for more than a decade while its workers' wages contributed about $70 million in tax in 2025. DP World has not confirmed those figures, and they are the union's case, not a regulator's finding.
The sharper fact is the legal one. The current enterprise agreement, struck in early 2024 after months of industrial action ended in three days of Fair Work Commission-facilitated talks, runs to about 2028, which means protected strike action is off the table until bargaining reopens. DP World announced the automation program after that agreement was completed. The MUA's response has been a public campaign rather than a picket line, along with a call to change the Fair Work Act so that introducing technology of this scale becomes something employers must bargain over, not merely announce.
The docks have been here before: the 2015 Hutchison redundancies, Patrick's automated Port Botany terminal and the fully automated VICT terminal in Melbourne each produced versions of this fight, and the ACCC's stevedoring monitoring program found the industry's profit margins near historical highs in its recent reports. What is new is the claim itself: not resistance to the machines, but a bid to convert their productivity into a shorter week at the same pay. The next hard deadline is 2028, when the agreement expires and the campaign becomes a bargaining position.
