Resumption set for meat workers’ talks

Press, 12 October 1976, Page 3

Resumption set for meat workers’ talks

Crucial talks between the Meat Workers’ Union and the Freezing Companies’ Association will be held in Christchurch on Thursday. The talks are regarded as crucial, because the export killing season is to begin in Canterbury on Monday. The union’s national action committee said last month that if the parties failed to reach agreement, the season might not get under way. The Canterbury works of the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company, are already killing 600 sheep and lambs a day, mostly for the local market, but from Monday a full chain will be working. At Timaru, the Smithfield

works of Waitaki-New Zealand Refrigerating Company will start killing on Monday, October 18, and the Islington works will start on November I.

The talks will be the third in a series, which got off to a bad start in Dunedin in August. The parties failed to agree on whose application should be accepted as a basis for going before the Industrial Commission. They were resumed at. the end of last month, and adjourned until Thursday. The union is seeking a 14 per cent wage increase and other allowances. No date has beer, set for a resumption of talks on the fertiliser workers’ award, according to the secretary of

the Canterbury branch of the Meat Workers’ Union (Mr W. Cameron). The fertiliser workers, who are members of the Meat Workers’ Union, went on

strike for 48 hours last month after the first round of talks broke down. The talks resumed last week, but were adjourned sine die. The workers, employed at Kempthorne and Prosser’s plant at Hornby, and three other South Island fertiliser workers, are seeking a 25 per cent wage increase, and have empowered the union’s management committee to reimpose industrial sanctions if the employers do not enter into “meaningful discussions.”