Workers deny causing delays

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33477, 7 March 1974, Page 3

Workers deny causing delays

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, March 6. Construction workers building part of the extensions to the Tasman Pulp and Paper mills at Kawerau said today that the management was to blame for any delays.

The Downer-Comstock, Ltd, construction site committee issued a 750-word statement objecting to attempts to blame the work force for the extensions being behind schedule.

The statement said there had been no stoppages or strikes on their site for months.

“This committee, comprised of delegates of every union on the site, maintains that, lack of production is in the main the result of ineffective and inefficient management.” Company officials, when blaming the work force for any problems, had not told :the whole story, the statement said.

“They could also have mentioned the lack of liaison between sections of the work force, failure to provide materials or equipment at the required times, failure to 'order or procure stores, mistakes in setting out, radical changes in design after work had been started, industrial relations handled by people 'with neither the personality nor the experience for this sensitive position. “This committee suggests that these and other factors, which are purely the domain of management, have had as much if not more effect on

production than any action by the men.”

The committee dismissed as a meaningless exercise the decision by the company to give workers on the site two weeks to improve production or face the sack, and then to announce on Tuesday that things had improved sufficiently for the threat to be withdrawn.

In fact, the statement said, this provocative act had done nothing to improve production.

Improved production could result only from improved management, which was something quite outside the i responsibility of either workers or unions.