Freezing works walk-out

Press, 4 May 1978, Page 3

Freezing works walk-out

The N.C.F. Kaiapoi freezing works lost a kill of 4500 stock yesterday when meat workers walked out after non-union labour was used to fix machinery. The machinery broke down abut 9.30 a.m. when a beast’s head was put down the wrong chute and jammed the machinery'. Because fitters were on strike in the second one-day stoppage at the works in the last fortnight, the management called on salaried engineers to fix the machinery. The butchers held a stopwork meeting and decided to go home after finishing what

was on the chain. A spokesman for the Canterbury Meat Workers’ Union said last evening that they had gone home because it was union policy not to work with nonunion labour. The manager of N.C.F. Kaiapoi (Mr K. Pearce) said that the breakdown of the machinery had been “unfortunate.” The fitters, he said, had given no prior warning of their stoppage, which was over a claim for extra payment. When agreement was reached with the Meat Workers’ Union for an extra 600 head of stock to be killed on top of the works quota of 6000 a day, the fitters had claimed they should be paid an extra 3i per cent, said Mr Pearce. The company had declined to pay them extra because it considered they did not have to do any extra, work. The next move would be to call for the assistance of a conciliator, said Mr Pearce.