Meeting called for on oil tanker drivers’ pay dispute

Press, 5 December 1979, Page 2

Meeting called for on oil tanker drivers’ pay dispute

PA Wellington An Auckland industrial 'conciliator, Mr John Button, has called for a conference on the oil tanker drivers’ pay dispute. The conference will be held at Auckland at 11.3 C a.m. on Saturday. Mr Button will be the chairman. The Minister of Labour (Mr Bolger) will meet oil company representatives on Friday and last evening talked to drivers’ federation officials. | After the 45-minute meeting Mr Bolger said he thought there was enough common ground between the drivers and their employers to get talks started again. i "I hope we can avoid the strike and 1 am reasonably optimistic that we can get a meeting together,” he said. The proposed strike is over three unresolved issues in an earlier conciliation council: an 11.7 per cent wage claim, a shortening of the term for long-service leave entitlement from 10 years to five years, and an agreement on future redundancies. Mr Button said from Auckland that if the confer,ence indicated a possibility of settlement, it was open to

him to convert it into a new conciliation council if the parties were agreeable. “They will all be here and so there will be no problem if things go smoothly,” he. said. First, however, the crossfiling of claims with the Arbitration Court would need to be resolved. After a breakdown of an earlier conciliation council in Wellington on November 28, the Drivers’ Federation on November 30, withdrew its claims from the court and refiled. This was followed by a filing of claims by the oil industry employers. For a conciliation council to be convened out of Saturday’s conference, employers would probably be required to withdraw their claims or indicate their intention to do so. Oil store workers at Timaru met yesterday and went on strike until tomorrow in protest about the breakdown in their award talks, i The 'workers, members of 1 the Labourers’ Union, are re- I sponsible for the receipt of. fuel and oil at oil company’ depots and oversee the unloading and dispatch of tankers. Christchurch oil store; workers will hold a stop-

work meeting today. Oil store workers at Auckland and Mount Maunganui began a 48-hour strike yesterday. The South Island secretary of the Labourers’ Union (Mr W. B. Brown) said that there were about five workers at Timaru and about 40 at Christchurch. He said that the union expected clerical workers to refrain from doing work normally done by oil store workers. The Clerical Workers’ Union had been advised. A spokesman for the oil companies at Timaru said that the strike was not affecting distribution because the management was doing part of the work normally done by the storemen. A grade one oil store worker at present gets an award wage of $ll4 a week, and a grade five worker gets $l2l plus a grade allowance of $8 a week. The unions have asked for an 11.7 per cent wage increase, . which would bring the., grade one worker to $127 a week and the grade five worker to $135 plus the $8 a week allowance. The unions argue that the 11.7 per cent increase in wages is necessary to retain relativity with other stores workers and with oil tanker drivers.