Carpet Factory Remains Idle

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32252, 21 March 1970, Page 1

Carpet Factory Remains Idle

The Riccarton carpet factory, idle since midday on Thursday, will not resume pro- 1 duction before Monday at the earliest. Several ! shifts are normally worked during the weekend.

The woollen workers at the’ factory walked out on Thursday after the management refused to negotiate with them on a request for a 5 per cent wage increase. Three hundred and ninety three workers of a union membership of 480 met at the plant yesterday morning and decided to continue the stoppage over the week-end and meet again at 8 a.m. on Monday. Union officers have asked to; meet the management an hour before the Monday meeting, and the manager (Mr J. H. Bowie) said yesterday that he had agreed to this. The voting at yesterday’s meeting was 271 in favour of: continuing the stoppage, and 122 against. Mr G. H. Mitchenson, a vice-president of the'

Riccarton branch of the union Isaid yesterday that the stoppage on Thursday, also decided on a secret ballot, had been approved by 358 workers, with 122 opposed. Mr Mitchenson said he assumed that most of the 87 who had not attended the meeting yesterday had been "voting with their feet” and were still opposed to returning to work The union wage demand .is for an interim increase until a new award is negotiated later in the year. The company, a member of the Feltex (New Zealand), Ltd, group, says it has conferred with other carpet manufacturers and woollen mills and it has 'been agreed that the employers will negotiate only on a 'national basis.