MEN FOR FREEZING WORKS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23817, 10 December 1942, Page 6

MEN FOR FREEZING WORKS

MANPOWER COMMITTEE’S DECISIONS

The choice between sending three slaughtermen to work in freezing works or allowing them to remain with a byproduct industry of the city butcheries, described as essential to the public health, fell to the Industrial Manpower Committee yesterday when Canterbury Bye-Products, Ltd., appealed against the decision of the manpower officer (Mr M. Ross) in granting permission to three employees to leave and go to work for Thomas Borthwick and Sons. Mr K. G. Archer presided, and Messrs H. Lee (employers) and P. J. Kelly (employees) were with him. The names of the men concerned were John Ernest Dobbin, Sydney James Smith, and Thomas Waaka. For the appellant company, Mr J. H. Sproston said that they were now five men short (out of 13) in the manure and tallow department, and could not cope with the raw material, which was required to be collected daily from butchers and from the abattoirs, and could not be left overnight. This aspect was most important now that summer was coming on. The products were blood and bonedust (700-800 tons a year), and tallow, of which latter the entire output was bought by the Marketing Department for export. When asked what would happen if the firm was unable to make its collections of offal, Mr Sproston said that the offal would have to bo buried, and that would take even more labour than was required to put it through the company’s plant. Walter Carr, manager of the city abattoirs, said that the demands of hygiene made daily removal of offal an imperative necessity. Mr O. A. Keith, works manager for Borthwicks, said that the men involved were all slaughtermen who had been in the freezing works In past seasons. Mr Sproston said that he realised the prior claim, in that case, but ho sought the manpower officer’s help m securing labourers, possibly from the Army, to replace them, “I’m afraid we can’t very well let you have them, since they arc slaughtermen, and will be needed for the killing season,” said Mr Archer, “but I suggest that Mr Ross might help you get hold of labourers who wouldn’t mind the work." The appeals were dismissed. R. Cadogan appealed against the manpower officer’s refusal to let him leave the Alloy Steel Company, Ltd. • No representative of the Alloy Steel Company was present and Mr Ross said that in view of this he proposed to deal with Cadogan’.s application again and grant it, so that there would be no need to proceed with the case.

The appeal of Booth, Macdonald and Company, Ltd,, seeking the retention of Alec Brodie Arps, a blacksmith striker, who had been directed to work for Thomas Borthwick and Sons, was dismissed. Mr P. W. Frampton, for the appellant company, said Arps had worked in the freezing works for the last several seasons.