Milkmen may face prosecution

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32874, 24 March 1972, Page 1

Milkmen may face prosecution

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, March 23.

Wellington’s milkmen might be prosecuted if they carried out their decision announced today to stop Sunday deliveries, the general manager of the Milk Board (Mr D. J. Henderson) said tonight.

He said, however, that the board had so far not decided on any action, hoping that the contractors and the Wellington City Council could reach a settlement in the matter.

In announcing that there would be no more Sunday

deliveries the city’s contractors said they had been forced into “taking the matter into their own hands.” The president of Associated Milk Contractors of Wellington (Mr J. Seggie) and the secretary (Mr T. C. Gallagher) in a notice to the public said they had tried in the past to negotiate a sixday week, but without success.

The six-day week had always been a big issue with vendors. They had taken the matter into their own hands to ease the grind of a 365day, seven-day-a-week year. To ensure that enough milk would be available for customers from dairies in the Wellington area at the weekend a roster was being arranged so that extra deliveries could be made, the notice said. “A deliberate breach of their contract with the department,” was the reaction of the general manager of the Municipal Milk Department (Mr A. H. Thomas). EXTRA MILK He hoped that settlement would be reached with the contractors in further talks, he said. In the meantime, the de-

partment would bottle extra milk for Saturday. But not enough could be bottled for a double delivery. Milk should be available from dairies, however, and. as well, it would be available from the department on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday from 8 a.m.

The Milk Board at the present time was “an onlooker only, but a very concerned one,” said Mr Henderson.

Prosecutions of contractors refusing to give a seven-day service, or a reduction in the margins of remuneration received by the contractors were avenues which could possibly be taken in the absence of a settlement, he said.

“All contractors operate under a licence which calls upon them to give a sevenday delivery. If they do not comply they are breaching their licences, and that would be an , offence under the Milk Act,” Mr Henderson said.

Mr Henderson said the refusal to deliver on Sundays was not being echoed in other areas of the country.

A factor affecting milkmen in other centres might be that they had a "greater stake” in the rounds than those in Wellington.

“Most of them own their own businesses, unlike those in Wellington, who contract from the City Council,” said Mr Henderson.