> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://redflag.org.au/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # ‘It was shock and awe’: Portland crew member describes raid - URL: https://redflag.org.au/article/node-5096/ - Published: 2016-02-02T03:37:49.000Z - Updated: 2024-03-28T02:11:07.000Z - Author: Steph Price - Tags: Unions and Workers, Activism and Reports, #Import 2025-10-13 13:42 “My name is Zac. I was an integrated rating on the MV *Portland* until I was pulled out of my bunk in the middle of the night.” An integrated rating is an entry level position in the maritime industry. It’s a qualification that gives young seafarers their start. Zac, 23, had his as part of the crew of the *Portland*. For 28 years, this was the ship that hauled alumina for Alcoa from its mines and refinery in Western Australia to its smelting plant in Portland, Victoria, where aluminium is extracted and trucked out to be sold. In early November, news broke that Alcoa was replacing the MV *Portland* and its crew. The alumina the smelting plant needed would be carried aboard the *Strategic Alliance*, registered in Singapore, and crewed by workers paid about $200 a week, according to reports from the International Transport Federation. Alcoa estimated that it would save around $6 million a year by opting out of local wage standards in this way. The necessary licence was issued to the *Strategic Alliance* by the federal government in October. Since the middle of November, the crew of the *Portland* had been defying orders from the company and the Fair Work Commission to sail the ship on a one-way voyage to Singapore. There, Alcoa wanted the *Portland* scrapped and the crew put on a plane back to Australia, jobless. Instead, with the backing of supporters, the MV *Portland* crew set up a community assembly on the Portland harbour and left the ship in dock there. On 13 January, two months into their protest, Zac was one of five crew members asleep on board the *Portland* when it was boarded by a squad of security guards. “I’d knocked off, turned in”, he told *Red Flag*. “And in the middle of the night, the old man – the skipper – came in with two goons, woke me up, threw a bit of paper at me and said, ‘You’ve got 10 minutes to vacate the ship or you’ll be arrested’. “We had to grab our stuff, we had to walk down the gangway, we weren’t allowed back on the ship – not even to get our personal belongings – and then we were left out on the wharf and watched the ship sail away.” The eviction was fast and, for Zac, unexpected. “It was sort of shock and awe”, he said. “How would you feel if someone came in in the middle of the night and said ‘Listen, this is your home, but I’m taking your job off you, you’ve got 10 minutes to get out of your home’ and that’s it. There are no words that can explain.” Zac, others from the MV *Portland*, and around 200 unionists, took their protest to the Victorian Liberal Party headquarters in Melbourne’s CBD at a lunchtime rally on 27 January. Dale Eaton, Maritime Union of Australia delegate on board the *Portland*, told the crowd that workers will continue the fight and will be moving their assembly to Canberra. Just one day after the Melbourne rally, it was announced that the federal government had signed the termination notice of another local crew. It approved Rio Tinto subsidiary Pacific Aluminium’s application for a licence to ship alumina from Gladstone to Newcastle on a overseas-flagged ship. Speaking at a snap action organised by the Newcastle branch of the MUA, assistant national secretary Warren Smith said: “We are dealing with corporate thuggery of the highest order. We are being replaced by the most exploited workers in the world.”