Meat men out after F.O.L. call

Press, 27 February 1981, Page 1

Meat men out after F.O.L. call

The Meat Workers’ Union, became embroiled in the dispute yesterday after receiving a telegram from the Federation of Labour urging it to support the arrested picketers. The union responded by calling for an indefinite strike from midnight last night. Some of its members defied the call. The union’s national secretary Mr A. J. Kennedy, said that it had been left to individual branch secretaries to orchestrate the action and to decide whether to involve related trades workers in tanneries, soap works, chemical manure works, and smallgoods plants. The Canterbury branch secretary of the union, Mr W. R. Cameron, said that the strike in Canterbury would not involve relatedtrades workers.

Mr Kennedy said that the duration of the strike would depend on how long the jailed unionists stayed in Mount Eden Prison and the attitude of the Government to the “obnoxious

legislation” under which picketers could be arrested. The Christchurch City abattoir will be closed because of the strike although, according to a union member, who declined to be • named, most of the workers will be on strike against their wishes. The union member said that at a meeting yesterday the abattoir workers had voted against striking but had been told that they would be blacklisted by the union if they did not strike. The abattoir workers were annoyed that they should lose a day’s pay when members of the Engineers’ Union at Christchurch Airport were still working. Workers at the Ashburton Borough abattoir and the Fairton freezing works will not strike. The Ashburton abattoir manager, Mr A. L. McDonald, said that the workers would be forced to comply only if the F.O.L. called for a general strike.