The Press FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1961. Lamb-Killing Quotas

Press, Volume C, Issue 29679, 24 November 1961, Page 12

The Press FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1961. Lamb-Killing Quotas

Canterbury freezing workers act against their own long-term interests and the interests of all other wage-earners when they dictate to freezing companies and farmers how many lambs may be killed in a day during the busy season. It is in the national interest that meat should be processed when it is ready for processing. The loss if stock have to be held too long is suffered mainly and directly by the farmers; but the effects of a diminished overseas income are finally spread through the whole community, as everyone has come to understand recently. Nor is it any real answer to rail stock long distances to places where workers are more reasonable, because that adds heavily to production costs and reduces the quality of the meat processed. The results from the imposition of the union’s quotas are particularly serious in a year of drought, such as that in Canterbury this season.

Why do the freezing workers persist in their anti-social behaviour? It can only be assumed that they fix killing quotas with some idea of spreading high earnings over a longer

I season, fallacious though! that appears to be. Such an attitude might have attracted sympathy in the days when freezing workers had no assurance of employment in the off-season: (though higher wage rates were supposed to compensate for that). But that consideration has no force today when governments are expected to see that no-one lacks work in slack times. If full empoyment all the year round is the goal of government the corollary should be a sense of responsibility among unionists. This is not being shown by Canterbury freezing; workers, and has not been shown by them, for some; years. The union may be I able to sustain its high-' handed policy again this year, when farmers are hard-pressed economically; but it is storing up trouble for itself. That trouble may ! come sooner than members think if New Zealand’s economic difficulties grow worse next year. Sooner or later a stand will have to be taken against industrial irresponsibility. The cost of; industrial strife measured! against the cost of growing economic inefficiency is not as great as a peace-loving nation is inclined to think.