Dispute Settled

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31540, 30 November 1967, Page 26

Dispute Settled

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Nov. 29. The Court of Arbitration has settled the dispute about the mechanical butter conveyor at Auckland’s Bledlsloe Wharf by ordering the freezing workers to synchronise their hours of work with the watersiders. In a memorandum to the Court’s decision, Judge Blair said the conveyor would be worked only for 6) hours a day, instead of 8} hours if the times were rearranged. In a dissenting opinion, Mr A. B. Grant says that neither the Court nor the employers should flatter themselves that this decision solved the problem of industrial relations on the wharf. His Honour said the employers wanted the synchronisation for obvious reasons. The freezing workers did not suggest that the slight adjust-

ment necessary caused any real inconvenience. “The union’s major point is that if they are to work the same hours as the watersiders there should be no differentiation in rates of pay,” his Honour said. A secondary point was that the union was not properly consulted in the initial stages about the proposed change. It was clear beyond argument that the lack of synchronisation in working hours over the last two years, when the hours were changed, was inefficient and costly. There were wasteful side-effects, and more than two hours working time a day was lost on the conveyor. “If this unnecessarily lost working time is converted into boxes of butter, which could have been loaded, and this Is translated Into money, the cost to the community must be enormous,” his Honour said.