Beehive talks on refinery dispute

Press, 10 October 1983, Page 9

Beehive talks on refinery dispute

PA Wellington The president of the Federation of Labour, Mr W. J. Knox, and the Minister of Labour, Mr Bolger, held talks last evening to try to resolve the Marsden Point pay dispute. The Government has said there is a risk of petrol shortages if the refinery workers’ dispute is not solved soon and the refinery restarted.

But Mr Knox, talking to reporters before going into the talks in Mr Bolger’s Beehive office, angrily denied this.

The company itself had admitted that the refinery was not yet ready to start up again, he said.

Mr Knox said that he had offered to give an assurance that the settlement of the dispute would not have a “flow on” effect to other wage settlements.

He was not going to give a written assurance. But he had given a similar assurance during the Kinleith dispute and the unions had honoured it.

Service station proprietors favour a ban on week-end petrol sales if selling restrictions become necessary because of the delay in restarting production at the refinery.

Delegates of the Motor Trades Association’s service station division, during their annual conference at Rotorua yesterday, said they would be “most concerned about any action which could cause friction on the forecourt.”

For that reason they felt closing service stations from 7 p.m. on Thursdays to 6 a.m. on Mondays would be the best of the four options open to the Government as supplies dwindle. A refinery spokesman said on Saturday that they would have expected to be able to restart the refinery on Monday. It would take several days before sufficient fuel has been refined to fill a coastal tanker.