Meat workers seek four-day week

Press, 20 October 1981, Page 2

Meat workers seek four-day week

The idea of a four-day week for five days pay, abandoned by the Engineers’ union when it' settled the Metal Trades Award, is being vigorously pursued by the . more powerful Meat Workers’ Union. The West Coast North Island branch, with the blessing of the national office in Christchurch, yesterday released a glossy booklet putting the case for the shorter working week where mechanisation threatens jobs in the industry. This would apply not just to meat workers, but also to meat inspectors, clerical staff, and others. “We accept the new technology provided there is no loss of jobs or displacement of workers.” says the booklet. “We achieve this with a fourday working week for five days pay. This is to be the basis for all negotiations, in both new and existing works, when and where workers' jobs are replaced by machines.”

The whole question of automation in the meat industry is at present being discussed by a consultative committee chaired by a con-, ciliator, Mr Len Fortune, but so far the Meat Workers' Union has not put forward the idea of a four-day week. The secretary of the union, Mr A. J. Kennedy, says that the Freezing Companies: Association is already aware of the claim. “It is an

alternative when a company can’t come up with jobs the other way,” he says. The booklet says that there will be no need to increase killing charges and that they will be significantly reduced. “The employer also benefits,” says the booklet. “Absenteeism drops, carcase dressing and hygiene improves, and therefore the number of exportable carcases increases.” As a case study, the booklet compares manning levels and labour costs at three works— Oringi (Dannevirke), which is due to open on October 27 and will contain the latest in labour-saving machines: Longburn, a modern plant with manning levels below the national average; and Petone, old and run-down with high manning levels. Both Longburn and Petone were running solely as threechain mutton sheds when the

union obtained its figures at Christmas last year, with daily chain tallies of 3199 lambs at Longburn and 3200 lambs at Petone. Oringi's tallies were expected to be the same as Petone’s. . The union says that all three works produce similar products and do similar processing functions. But Oringi, with its automation, would require a total staff of only 350, compared with Longburn’s 790 and Petone’s 823. Oringi’s wage bill would be an estimated $4.8 million a year. Longburn's was $10.3 million for the year ended September 30, and Petone’s was $10.5 million for the same period. The union says that if Oringi accepted a four-day week it would mean a wage bill of $6 million a year, but this was still a saving of $4.4 million on the average of the Longburn and Petone wage bills.