Strike By 60 Key Carpet Workers

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31128, 3 August 1966, Page 18

Strike By 60 Key Carpet Workers

Sixty men and women of the carpetsetting staff of the Riccarton factory of the Carpet Manufacturing Company, Ltd., began a strike yesterday.

The strike by these key workers would cause the factory to stop production by the end of this week if the dispute was not solved, said the secretary of the Riccarton branch of the Woollen Workers’ Union (Mr P. McGinn) yesterday. The factory employed 600 persons. Mr McGinn said that all carpet setters were on the same rate of bonus, but some designs, particularly those for the export market, were more difficult than others. The strikers alleged that workers who were “nice and polite to the bosses” received the easier patterns to work on. This

almost automatically ensured them bigger bonuses. The strike, said Mr McGinn, would last till the management decided to provide an equitable system for all workers.

Two stop-work meetings and three strikes had occurred at the factory in the last few days, he said. Among them was a two-hour strike by two foremen, who alleged lack of support by the management.

Mr McGinn said he would try to get the workers back to work by midday tomorrow, so that negotiations with the management could proceed. Attempts by the union to solve the favouritism problem, he said, had been frustrated by the management’s consistently allowing bonus workers to lose bonus money while training other workers, which was a breach of the award, he said. Mr McGinn said that the strike would delay completion of an order of several thousand square yards of carpet for Australia. The manager of the company (Mr D. R. Hindson) refused last evening to comment.