Engineers’ pressure

Press, 21 July 1976, Page 1

Engineers’ pressure

Boilermakers and engineers at the two engineering shops in Lyttelton began an overtime ban yesterday in an effort to get the employers to join the unions in taking a claim for higher rates of pay to the Industrial Commission. The men, numbering about 70, claim that the 8c allowance they are paid above Christchurch rates for working in Lyttelton has been eroded since it was granted by the commission in 197*4. They have been try ing for some time to get an increase in rates and voted for the overtime ban at a meeting on Monday to protest about lack of progress. The secretary of the Can-

terbury Boilermakers’ Union (Mr K. A. Perkins) said the employers at the two plants had agreed earlier this year that any deterioration in rates should be rectified. But he said the Canterbury Employers’ Association had later said that the employers could not join in an application to the comission because an increase in rates would be against the wage regulations. Mr Perkins said the boilermakers and the engineers believed that the increase in rates could be granted by the commission under the “exceptional circumstances’’ clause of the regulations. In any case, he said, it ought to be up to the commission to decide on what the clause meant rather

than for the employers to assume that no rise could be granted. He said that the Employers’ Association had until noon on Friday to meet the unions and arrange the joint approach. The workers will meet again on Friday afternoon to discuss progress. The director of the Canterbury Employers’ Association (Mr N. M. West) said the Lyttelton employees’ case could not be regarded as exceptional. “The employers have no intention of embarrassing the commission with what the employers know to be small discrepancies,” said Mr West. When a clear case of an exceptional anomaly came then the employers would consider taking it to the commission, he said.