Stalemate in lead dispute

Press, 4 March 1980, Page 6

Stalemate in lead dispute

An industrial dispute at the Woolston factory of Amalgamated Batteries has reached a stalemate, with the 80 workers there claiming yesterday that they-had been locked out. The company has denied this. The workers went on strike last Thursday after one of them had been suspended as a precaution against possible lead poisoning. Susnended workers get 80 per cent of their-wages through; Accident Compensation.

The who are members of the Engineers’ Union, decided last November to strike if any one of them was suspended because of a danger of lead poisoning.

The workers returned to work yesterday and the company put several proposals to. them. But according to the organiser for the Canterbury branch of the union (Mr C. Wise) the proposals were unacceptable.

He said the company wanted the union to refrain from more strikes until a Health Department report had been compiled and recommendations made. This was unacceptable because it might take a long time for the report and recommendations to be completed. The company had also requested that the union agree to accept unequivocally the recommendations that the Health Department might make.

The union could not accept that condition and had suggested to the company that the parties accept the status quo until a preliminary meeting between them and the Health Department today. The company said that the status quo was unacceptable. )t Mr Wise said that some ventilation equipment had been installed but it was not working properly. The general manager of

the company, Mr E. S. Clash, said the company had put a number of options to the workers, the last being that they should return to work and abide by the Lead Process Regulations, 1950. “When they rejected this it put us in an impossible position,” he said. Among the requirements of the regulations was that workers had to refrain from smoking in the work place. This was one of the factors which appeared to be linked with the workers who had had to be suspended because of excess lead levels in their blood.

“Work is available if they agree to abide by the regulations,” said Mr Clash. The company had spent nearly $250,000 in the last five years on items.. directly or indirectly related to workers’ health and welfare, including an extensive exhaust system, a new ablution block, and' a factory laundry so that overalls

could be changed frequently. The company had also established its own occupational-health clinic, with a doctor and full-time nurse.

Air tests taken by the Health Department last May had shown that lead was below the permissible levels in all the areas sampled. The company was also cooperating with a survey to be made next month by the department’s occupationalhealth unit.

The company could not accept the union’s view that it should abide by the World Health Organisation’s level of acceptable lead levels in the blood of 3.8 tnicrobols per millilitre of blood. New Zealand’s level, set by the Health Department, was 7.6 tnicrobols per millilitre. “If the W.H.O. figures were imposed every lead process in the world would have to be closed,” said Mr Clash.