Port Timaru under black ban

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33433, 15 January 1974, Page 1

Port Timaru under black ban

(N.Z. Press Association,

WELLINGTON, January 14.

The Port of Timaru is to be put under a black ban by the Storemen and [Packers’ Union. The union’s general secretary (Mr P. J. Mansor) will go to Timaru on Thursday to discuss the ban with local union officials. I The ban will be designed

to prevent the consigning and receipt of all goods through the port; however, petroleum products may be excluded from the ban.

Mr Mansor said today that the ban was not designed to prevent goods entering or leaving Timaru. They will be permitted through the ports of Lyttelton or Dunedin, or to be carried by rail. He said the ban was a direct result of the Timaru watersiders’ embargo on the handling of meat packed into containers at the South Can-

terbury Co-operative Cool Stores.

Mr Mansor said that the ban was related to the transfer of off-wharf container depots at Wellington from the Storemen and Packers’ Union to the Waterside Workers’ Union. It is also related to the decision by the Minister oi Labour (Mr Watt) not to intervene in the Timaru situation until there was full settlement of the Wellington off-wharf depots situation. He said that initially the

Canterbury branch of the Storemen and Packers’ Union, of which Timaru is a subbranch. would be involved in the ban on the port.

This will prevent goods from anywhere in the Canterbury province being consigned through Timaru or received from the port. The ban on container meat from the South Canterbury cool stores has existed since last July. The manager of the South ’Canterbury Co-operative Cool Stores (Mr M. Petersen) said

in a telephone interview that the dispute had prevented the company from completing its development plans.

Mr Petersen said that the total cost of the development was in the vicinity of $325,000, and that work estimated to cost $150,000 had been postponed. “We completed part of the expansion — the building of one complete coolstore — but we have not yet been able to use it,” he said.