Strike at steel mill continues

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33541, 23 May 1974, Page 14

Strike at steel mill continues

(New Zealand Press Associations

AUCKLAND, May 22.

The strike by nine greasers at the Glenbrook mill of New Zealand Steel, Ltd, began to assume serious proportions today, when an expected settlement failed to emerge.

The greasers will meet tomorrow to consider the latest peace proposals, but there is no great optimism that the strike will end.

Already as a result of the strike the Glenbrook mill, employing 1600 men, has been idle for a week, and supplies of galvanised iron and pipe are starting to run short.

Half the output of Pacific Steel, Ltd, has been cut, and steel rods needed by the building industry have virtually disappeared off the market.

GKN New Zealand, Ltd, is becoming concerned that its production might be affected, and supplies of wire to farmers curtailed.

Other factories directly or indirectly dependant on supplies from New Zealand Steel are worried that they might also be affected.

The greasers stopped work on Thursday last week, and the mill had to close. Since then there have been frequent meetings involving the Engine Drivers’ Union, to which the men belong, the other unions at the mill, the

jmill management, and, on some occasions, the Industrial Mediator (Mr J. P. Cranston) to try to find a settlement. The dispute is a complex one.

When the steel mill opened seven years ago an intricate : 12-point job evaluation system was imported from the Canadian steel works to calculate just how much each job was worth. The greasers have felt that the system is unfair to them. “The scheme ought never to have been brought into use at all, because it is based on foreign conditions and not on conditions here,” a spokesman said. “The job that greasers do in the mill was not properly evaluated at the beginning, and the evaluation has grown even more unfair over the years because the responsibility of the job has increased tremendouslv.”