Stevedores Complain Of Pay Disparity

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30710, 27 March 1965, Page 16

Stevedores Complain Of Pay Disparity

A national strike of stevedores was always possible if agreement on rates of pay was not reached with the port employers within a month, said the president of the Lyttelton Stevedores’ Union (Mr P. Prutton) yesterday. Stevedores in Lyttelton, he said, were grieved at the big disparity between the takehome pay received by watersiders and by stevedores. “The watersiders are directly under our control, yet we get considerably less money than they do,” he said. National representatives of the Stevedores’ Union and the Port Employers’ Association have been negotiating in Wellington this week about stevedores’ pay.

Mr Prutton said that the Lyttelton stevedores would start work on Monday as scheduled.

Negotiations with the employers would continue next week, or in the very near future, because the stevedores’ present award expired on April 30. “Everything is now in the melting pot for the next four weeks,” said Mr Prutton.

A recent pay increase of 5d an hour received by the watersiders. he said, had brought their basic pay to 8s 4d. An average hourly bonus of 3s 9d had increased pay to 12s Id an hour, and the watersiders received Is an hour freezer rates, giving them a total of 13s 9d an hour. The 5d an hour increase being offered to stevedores would give them only 10s an hour under the employers’ new proposal. Mr Prutton said the only outside emolument that stevedores received was a certain amount of dirt money in a lump sum paid at the end of the year. It amounted to about one-fifth of the watersiders’ bonus rate.

The disparity between the two groups of workers, he said, was an anomaly. The biggest bone of contention, said Mr Prutton, was that the stevedores’ permanent hands were receiving at present a hourly rate of only 6s 7jd. The employers’ offer would add only 5d an hour to this.