Fight to keep jobs continues

Press, 12 August 1978, Page 1

Fight to keep jobs continues

Workers at Aulsebrooks will meet on Wednesday to consider ways to try to save the jobs of 250 of the staff faced with being laid off. By the time they meet, the Auckland Trades Council will have considered a plea for help from the Canterbury Trades Council, which is handling the negotiations over possible lay-offs. The president of the Auckland council (Mr G. H. Andersen) said yesterday that he thought that help would be forthcoming. The president of the Canterbury Trades Council (Mr W. R. Cameron)

declined to say whether workers at Aulsebrooks would vote by secret ballot on strike action. “There ras been no talk about any strike action. No-one has mentioned the word,” he said. But he agreed that the Trades Council had recommended that the workers take some form of direct action. Workers at Aulsebrooks received a circular yesterday in which the Trades Council executive said that the president and secretary (Mr L. G. Morel) had met the managing director (Mr R. J. Binning) and "as a result we believe no useful purpose would be served by any hasty action at this stage. We therefore propose to await certain devel-

opments which are in the pipeline and which should become clear by next Tuesday.” Reports that the Industrial Relations Council had asked the Government to intervene to help Aulsebrooks were not correct, said Mr Cameron, who is on the executive of the Federation of Labour. He said that the council had discussed the problems of the South Island in general and of regional development and had asked the Government for help in this direction. The Canterbury Storemen and Packers’ Union, which has a number of members at Aulsebrooks, including the union’s president, Mr Conway Jack, has accused A. B. Consolidated Holdings, Ltd, of

wanting to make “a fast rip-off profit by selling the Christchurch assets of the company, especially the very valuable site.” A check by ‘‘The Press” showed that the main Aulsebrooks factory in St Asaph Street is on 2.39 hectares, with a land value of $992,000 and improvements $1,044,000, giving a capital valuation in 1974 of $2,036,000. The company also has a site at 56 St Asaph Street of 372 square metres with a 1974 capital value of $31,000. Mr Binning said last evening that the Trades Council’s two advisers had asked him about exports and were satisfied that the company was progressing satisfactorily with biscuit exports.

Commenting on remarks by the Trades Council advisers that there were other options open to the management that had not been explored, Mr Binning said that twice he had challenged the union movement to take over the running of the company but they had backed out. “Quite frankly we’re going to say to the trade union movement, in the long run, ‘we’ll give it to you at a nominal charge, no leasing — you just pay the wages and either collect the profits or stand the losses at the end’,” said Mr Binning. A serious offer would be' made to the unions this week, he said.