Money for meat workers

Press, 3 December 1982, Page 1

Money for meat workers

Money has started to pour into the national office of the Meat Workers’ Union to support more than 250 Islington meat workers who have been out of work over an industrial dispute since October 15. The assistant secretary of the union, Mr J. Sneddon, said yesterday that a national appeal was launched by the union last week and money was now starting to come in from sheds throughout the union’s area — all

the’South Island and all the North Island except Auckland and Tomoana (Hastings), which is covered by the Auckland Freezing Workers’ Union. Mr Sneddon said that the Auckland union had not been approached for help. The money will come as a relief to the families of the Islington workers, some of whom have started to suffer hardship with the dispute no closer to being resolved than it was six weeks ago.

The dispute is over the cancellation by Waitaki N.Z. Refrigerating, Ltd, of incentive agreements with the union. The agreements or contracts have been built up over the years and contribute a big proportion of the daily pay of meat workers but the company wants to replace them with a completely new set of 12 contracts with revised “payment by results” formulae.

Hardship, page 7