POULTRY WORKERS UNION DECIDED

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31981, 7 May 1969, Page 9

POULTRY WORKERS UNION DECIDED

Workers under the General Foods poultry division employees’ industrial agreement are covered by the Food Processing Workers' Union and not the Freezing Workers’ Union, the Court of Arbitration has ruled.

On an application by an inspector of awards in Christchurch, Judge Blair, judge of the Court, said that the Court was called on to answer whether the membership rule of the Freezing Workers’ Union embraced workers in the poultry killing and dressing business under the industrial agreement The freezing workers’ representative had said that the series of operations in the killing, preparing and freezing of poultry followed the same lines as those when animals were killed and prepared .at freezing works, the Court’s written decision says. The membership rule of the Freezing Workers’ Union seemed to be aimed at workers associated with meat freezing works, the decision said. It was true that some of the expressions used, such as “slaughtermen,” if interpreted literally and liberally, could apply to the killing of any animal, bird or even fish; but the Court thought it was plain that the word had ac-

quired a special significance and was almost invariably used in industrial circles as referring to a man employed in the killing and dressing of stock in freezing works. “We think that on interpretive grounds and also taking into account the history and development of the freezing industry that the existing membership rule of the Freez ing Workers’ Union is not wide enough to include the kind of work being carried on by the workers engaged under the industrial agreement,” the Court said.