Gear workers 'led to destruction’

Press, 18 November 1981, Page 2

Gear workers 'led to destruction’

PA Masterton Gear Meat's 800 workers have been ■ “ied 'down the garden path to destruction,” by their union leaders, says Mr J. H. Falloon, National member of Parliament for Pahiatua. . “The West Coast Meat Workers’ Union secretary, Mr Ken Finlay, l can now happily say he has destroyed two freezing Works, first Ngaurariga, and now Gear,’' he said yesterday. He believed the works could have continued, provided the union accepted the firm’s manning, scales and it could have competed with other works in the area. Though distant from suppliers the Gear works at Petone had the advantage of being near the port of Wellington, and Mr Falloon said he believed. it could have become competitive with, the modernisation programme begun by the firm. He blamed last year’s $4.9 million loss squarely on the union, and said it would not have occurred had the union not “been on strike for half the year." Unlike other works, Gear employees failed to see the connection between their livelihoods and the returns to farmers diminishing as killing charges spiralled, he said. While the Waingawa freezing works had a record kill of one million last year,. Gear’s Petone works bad a kill of only 600,000, with about the same number of employees as at Waingawa. Wages made up as much as 65 per cent of running costs in freezing works, said Mr Falloon, and there was a striking contrast in profit margins between Oringi’s work-force of 320, Takapau’s 350, and Petone’s 800, with a similar throughput. .

Mr Falloon.said the Meat Workers’ Union presented equally graphic figures in its argument for the four-day week. Total. 'wages for all

unions and management at Oringi was:s4.B million based on 350 employees; compared with Longburn’s $10.3 million and Petone’s l $10.5 million.,- ; “We have to realise that other works will be against the wall if we do not try tQ shape up,” said Mr Falloom “New Zealand meat exporters are attempting to compete with ■ countries producing pork and chicken more cheaply than our iamb.” Controversial new works': such as Takapau and Oringi were shaping up to this com-’ petition well, according to Mr Falloon, while older works were being shocked into changes. .'a Westfield, in Auckland, had adopted a lower manning rate with the agreement c-f the Auckland union, which had kept the works open and most workers/employed, he said. ' Mr Falloon said that more unions must realise New Zealand faced a hard world in the international market. The Gear Meat Processing Company has rejected as “nonsense” a suggestion by the Labour member of Parliament, Mr F. M. Colman (Pencarrow), that, the Hawke’s Bay Farmers Meat Company might have “milked” its Petone plant for the benefit of its other sectors. Gear, a subsidiary of H.B.F.M/ also , criticised comments by another Labour member, Mr J. J. Terris (Western Hutt). A spokesman said that assertions that the company, had revalued the assets to give shareholders a $1 million bonus were “simply not correct.” ' • - “While Mr Colman and Mr Terris share our disappointment over the closing and the effect on staff, they seem to overlook the fact that if Hawke’s Bay Farmers- Meat Company had not: purchased Gear, the closing would have happened last year.”