Pulp Workers Agree To Meet Companies

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31221, 19 November 1966, Page 16

Pulp Workers Agree To Meet Companies

(New Zealand Press Association/ AUCKLAND, November 18. Representatives of the 1750 pulp and paper workers on strike at N. Z. Forest Products and Tasman Pulp and Paper Company plants today agreed to meet the companies to discuss ways of ending the strike.

At Kawerau, where 450 men are on strike and 300 others have been warned they may be dismissed shortly, officers of the Northern Federation of Pulp and Paper Workers will meet company officials at 9.30 a.m. tomorrow.

N.Z. Forest Products, which has plants at Kinleith, Whakatane and Auckland and has been hit by the strike of 1300 men, will meet union representatives in Rotorua at 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday. Mr N. Amphlett, secretary of the Northern Federation of Pulp and Paper Workers, said little could be expected from the talks with the employers. ‘These are only initial procedural talks to find out if

the employers are prepared to start negotiating on our terms —without us going back to work or agreeing to arbitration.”

Mr Amphlett said it would probably depend on whether the company was prepared to lose money to “fry” the unions or whether it wanted to get things working normally as soon as possible.

In the towns of Whakatane, Tokoroa and Kawerau, where the entire economy depends on income from the pulp and paper works, local people are hopeful that the talks will be the start of a break in the deadlock over wages and conditions. Shop Trade Falls Mr D. J. Heffernan, president of the Kawerau Chamber of Commerce, said trade in shops had fallen by 50 per cent since the strike began. The president of the Country Newspapers’ Association,

Mr B. E. Beamish, of Matamata, said tonight that the paper stocks of most of his members could probably last until Christmas.