Plasterers’ Award Behind

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32349, 15 July 1970, Page 18

Plasterers’ Award Behind

Canterbury and West- 1 land plasterers and tile- ] layers have a 26c-an- | hour grievance—the dif- i

ference between their own award rate and the $1.31 negotiated recently by the Northern District unions.

Ironically, when the Canterbury award was negotiated last November it paid the highest rate in the country. Now that it is obviously out of date, the secretary of the Canterbury Carpenters’ land Related Trades Union

(Mr R. J. Pitcairn) has been trying unsuccessfully to get the Arbitration Court to terminate the award to make way for a new one. Mr Pitcairn said last evening that he had made his first application to the Clerk of Awards on June 4 and so far had received no reply or acknowledgement. “What’s the good of going through legal channels when it doesn’t get you anywhere” he asked. “If something doesn’t happen soon we’ll have to take direct action, and thit’s all there is to it.” The secretary of the Canterbury Master Plasterers'

Association (Mr P. J. Taylor) said last evening that his association was not opposed to the application to the Arbitration Court and agreed that the present rate was out of date. \ He could understand Mr Pitcairn’s frustration, he said, because even after permission to go ahead was received from the Court there wqs still a mandatory delay of a month before new negotiations could begin. The North Island workers’ new rates were negotiated,bn June 1.6 and backdated Ito June 1.