Freezing workers win travel money

Press, 7 July 1977, Page 1

Freezing workers win travel money

The Committee of Inquiry into travel allowances in the freezing industry has made a compromise decision, recommending that employers provide transport for workers living more than two kilometres away who have to start work before 6 a.m., or finish after 10 p.m. It recommended that workers be paid their travel costs under these circumstances if the employer does not provide transport. The decision is a compromise between the employers’ view that commuting costs should be borne entirely by the workers and the view of the Meat Workers’ Union that workers had a case for being paid $1.50 a day for travelling more than 2km to work. The Minister of Labour (Mr Gordon) said he had referred the committee’s report and recommendations to the parties concerned and asked them to implement the recommendations. The committee comprising Mr H. P. Ralph (chairman), Mr J. B. Walton, and the secretary of the Meat Workers’ Union (Mr F. E. McNulty) was set up in January after a major confrontation in the industry in November.

A load-out ban was imposed by the union on November 9 when talks for a new award including the unions’ claim for a $1.50 a day travel allowance, broke down.

A compulsory conference was held in Christchurch on November 27 at which the chairman (Mr L. Fortune) ordered the meat workers to return to work.

They did. Conciliation talks resumed and resulted in a settlement on December 1, with the travel allowance issue left in the hands of a committee of inquiry. The committee travelled widely and heard many submissions from interested parties. In a dissenting opinion, Mr McNulty said the evidence submitted by the union substantiated the claim that the freezing in-

dustry had a special case for a travelling allowance.

He said most works were outside the main areas of public transport, their employment was seasonal, and they had irregular finishing times because of hygiene regulations and climatic variations. , Of special* concern to Mr McNulty is the exclusion of piece workers and incentive contract workers from gaining the travelling allowance, as their pay is based on completing work, which would normally be overtime, during normal working hours.

About a third of all meatworkers throughout New Zealand and in Canterbury are employed under productivity agreements and therefore ineligible for the travelling allowance, according to Mr McNulty. Mr McNulty said, however, that the committee’s recognition of the need for a travelling allowance in the industry was a breakthrough. He said the committee unanimously recommended the allowance be made free of tax. It was an all or nothing situation, said the president of the Auckland Freezing Workers’ Union (Mr F. Batnard) last evening, and there would be industrial action as a result of the committee’s recommendation.

The allowance would not be acceptable unless it was “across the board,” he said. The travelling allowance would be “one of the high points” of the union’s award, due for renegotiation on August 2.

Mr Barnard noted Mr McNulty’s dissenting opinion. “i wouldn’t blame him, because he would know the reaction of the workers to that,” he said. A lot of workers qualified for the allowance, but most of them were well paid, said Mr Barnard. "It is the lowerpaid blokes who are going to suffer again.” Disappointment about the decision was expressed by Mr W. R. Cameron, secretary of the Canterbury branch of the Meat

Workers’ Union and also president, of the Canterbury Trades Council. “I thought the committee would have recognised the case for a travelling allowance in a more practical way than it did,” he said.

Mr Cameron said the committee’s decision was "not necessarily a precedent” for other unions because special circumstances were involved in the meatworkers’ claim for the travelling allowance and also because “quite a number of unions have had a travelling allowance, some for more than 20 years.” The general manager of the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company, Ltd (Mr D. Morten) said he expected the committee’s decision to include an allowance for workers on overtime.

Less than 10 per cent of his staff would receive the allowance, he said, but at some Auckland works he thought about 30 per cent of the staff would.

The union was spearheading a Federation of Labour policy first taken up at its conference in May, 1975, and repeated again in May last year. The Employers’ Federation strongly opposed the granting of an allowance, fearing it might set a precedent which could cost the country S42IM. The assistant general manager of Waitaki-New Zealand Refrigerating Company, Ltd (Mr J. M. Ryan), said last evening that he considered it a fair and equitable decision. “There was no way the original claims of $2 a day could have been considered either on principle or on the grounds of the economy,’’ he said. Probably fewer than 10 per cent of meat workers worked in those hours in which employers would have to provide transport or reimbursement.

Waitaki would not alter its production itinerary to avoid the consequences of the decision.

“We are running the plants in the best manner possible at the moment,” Mr Ryan said.