Printers in support

Press, 31 May 1977, Page 1

Printers in support

The Printing Trades Union has gone a step further than most other unions in its support for the shop assistants in their protest against the Shop Trading Hours Bill, by placing a ban on the handling of newspaper material promoting extended shopping hours. The union’s national executive released a statement in Christchurch yesterday expressing “full support” for the shop assistants. The statement said that the Printing Trades Union saw the bill "as an attack

on the ordinary hours of workers, which would eventually extend to all avenues of employment, and would result in a breakdown in hard-won wages and conditions, increase price instability, and - squander energy resources. “The national executive directs all Printing Trades Union members in newspapers to refuse to handle printed material containing any promotional notices designed to vary the existing hours of work in retail establishments,” said the statement.

Support for the shop assistants also came from a meeting of executives of the Canterbury Trades Council yesterday. The meeting decided to ask unions to “actively support” the Shop Employees’ Union. The council’s president (Mr W. Cameron) said that active support meant direct action of some sort, whether bans, strikes, goslows, or other action. The nature of the action would be left to the unions to decide.