Mangere workers paid off

Press, 31 May 1978, Page 3

Mangere workers paid off

PA Auckland A total of 140 carpenters and labourers from the new Mangere bridge project were paid off yesterday. Today, they all intend to register as unemployed. The men form the spearhead of a national campaign to improve redundancy payouts in the construction industry.

Under a two-year-old agreement between the Federation of Labour and the Master Builders’ Federation, a maximum of two weeks wages is paid out when a carpenter or a building labourer is made redundant.

Government regulations, due to expire next month, restrict redundancy payments to two weeks pay. However, virtually unlimited redundancy payments based on one week’s pay for one year’s service are widespread outside the construction industry. After a two-hour stopwork meeting on the Mangere bridge site yesterday; the workers agreed that nothing had changed — their employers, Wilkins and Davies, Ltd, still' declined to " enter negotiations on a new redundancy deal — and their dismissals duly took effect.