Kawerau news brings relief

Press, 28 May 1983, Page 2

Kawerau news brings relief

PA Rotorua Residents and businessmen of the Central North Island timber towns, Kawerau and Murupara, were yesterday relieved that an end was in sight to the longest-running dispute to hit the giant Kawerau mill. The dispute at the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company, Ltd’s plant, which has resulted in more than 700 men in the two towns being temporarily out of work, looks set to be settled on Monday. . “When I heard the news last night my only reaction was, ‘thank God’,” said Father L. Bracken, a spokesman for a welfare committee set up in Murupara to help families of suspended workers. ‘I didn’t see anybody from the community until

this morning, but they’re all very relieved and relaxed.” However, he said there was some caution in case something should go wrong on Monday. “They’re a little worried about whether they will go straight back to work. For a while there will be shorter hours, I would think.” The manager of Tasman’s wholly-owned subsidiary, the Kaingaroa Logging Company, Murupara, Mr B. C. Heard, said yesterday that his problems were really just beginning. The H-hour meeting in Rotorua on Thursday involving Tasman’s management, the secretary of the northern Federation of Pulp and Paper Workers, Mr J. L. Murphy, and the secretary of the Federation of Labour, Mr K. G. Douglas, had agreed on the basis of

what was considered to be a satisfactory settlement. Mr Heard said that if the strike ended on Monday, Kaingaroa employees would go back to work on Tuesday at the earliest. He could not say if all the men would be taken back on that day. During the strike 5000 truckloads of timber, worth more than $2 million, was stockpiled by the Kaingaroa Company. Nearly all of it was pulp wood for Kawerau.

Mr Heard said it would have to be used quickly, or it would deteriorate to the stage where it could not be processed. Kaingaroa, which supplies logs to both the pulp and paper mill and Tasman’s sawmill in Kawerau, had to suspend 219 contractors and hourly-paid workers during the 46-day stoppage.