ABATTOIRS DISPUTE.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 157, 4 July 1921, Page 6

ABATTOIRS DISPUTE.

SUPPORT FOR COUNCIL,

MASTER BUTCHERS' ATTITUDE,

Master butchers and pork butchers met on Saturday evening to systematise the work being" done by them at the city abattoirs, and arrangements were made which will expedite the work. Also with the extra men engaged by the Council it is anticipated that master butchers will not be required to attend the abattoirs more than three days weekly to do all the killing required by them. The meeting passed the following resolution: "That this meeting of master butchers and pork butchers of Auckland views with apprehension the attempt made by the abattoirs branch of the Auckland Freezing Works Employees' Union to enforce an inferior standard of slaughtering at the municipal abattoirs than that obtaining at privately-owned works, and performed by members of the same union working under the same award, and strongly support the City Council in insisting that all the work at the municipal abattoirs cc carried out in a proper and efficient manner." Questioned regarding the dispute, the president of the Master Butchers' Association stated that he was unable to understand men making such high wages as the slaughtermen risKing the loss of their positions on account of such a trivial point as the question of sawing or chopping through the Tump bone, especially as other members of the same branch of "the Freezing Workers' Union, working under the same award, were quite content to do the work in exactly the manner required by the City Council. From inquiry made he fouiul that the average wage earned by these beef Dutchers was over £9 per week, and the average hours about thirty. In the Christchurch abattoirs, where the men were employed on a weekly wage of £4 10/, the hours, he said, were 44, and the slaughtering had to be done exactly as required by the employers.