Stand puzzles employers

Press, 8 April 1978, Page 4

Stand puzzles employers

The Canterbury Meat Retailers’ Association cannot understand opposition by butchers to working two late nights a week. Butchers intend introducing a ban on the sale of meat after 5.30 p.m. because the employers declined to write a provision into the award that butchers’ shops would open only one late night a week.

• “The law now provides that shops may open six nights a week.” said the association’s president (Mr B. G. Savers) in a statement. “All that the employers are asking is that the butchers agree to the same provision which has been agreed by the grocery employees, that any shop may open on two late nights a week,” he said.

"Employers fail to see why the Shop Assistants’ i

Union doe? not want that provision written into any other award.”

The union was reducing the income of its members by refusing the opportunity of overtime, he said.

The secretary of the Canterbury Shop Assistants Union (Mr B. Alderdice) said buchers did not want compulsory overtime.

“We are representing the butchers in negotiations, and it is clearly ‘he view of the : membership to seek one late night a week and no more," he said. The butchers’ situation could not be compared with that of the grocery employees. Whereas groceries could alternate staff on late nights, butchers’ shops would require the same skilled tradesmen on ail late mights, said Mr Alderdice.