Butchers to close early

Press, 17 April 1978, Page 6

Butchers to close early

PA Wellington Butchers in the four main centres, and Nelson and Blenheim will close at 5.30 p.m. this week after a Shop Employees’ Association ban on evening meat sales. Supermarkets will close their meat counters at the same time.

The ban, imposed after the union and employers failed to reach agreement on evening sales, will last indefinitely. But the association’s research officer and award coordinator (Mr R. J. Campbell) said yesterday that the ban would be lifted on shops which agreed to limit meat sales to one night a week. Some supermarkets had already agreed to talk about reaching such an agreement, he said. Mr Campbell will go

to Auckland today to negotiate with a group of supermarkets for a one-night-a-week meat sales agreement. The shop employers’ advocate (Mr G. T. Perfect) said that the. union had failed to get its own way when the Shop Trading Hours Act, which allows late shopping on any week day, was passed last year. “It is now trying to impose its will on the retail industry by way of the negotiation process,” he said. The ban had been imposed when talks over a new national butchers’ award had broken down. The union’s policy seemed to be aimed at either limiting shopping hours or making the asking price so high that shopkeepers could not vary their hours, Mr Perfect said.