Dump closed in $6.18 dispute

Press, 31 October 1983, Page 5

Dump closed in $6.18 dispute

The Christchurch City Council’s rubbish dump at Bexley was closed yesterday and on Saturday because of an industrial dispute over “dirt money.” The three workers at the dump have threatened to stay away next week-end also unless the council agrees to pay them $2.06 each for working at the dump on Thursday when stockpiled rubbish bags from the old south belt yard were dumped by street collection staff, who were paid the allowance for handling the rubbish bags, left from a dispute last week.

the acting general manager of the City Council, Mr H. E. Surtees, said last evening that he was ready and willing to discuss the issue, but if the workmen persisted in their threat to keep the dump closed he would have to look at ways of keeping it open. He would not spell out his options.

Mr Surtees said the allowance was an award payment made for the handling of rubbish of an exceptionally unpleasant nature. The workers who handled it last Thursday would be paid the allowance as well as overtime, but the three dump workers were not entitled to it. One collects money and the others drive bulldozers.

They already received a special allowance for working at the dump, said Mr Surtees.

During talks early last week another dispute at the dump the union representatives said a special allowance should be paid for handling the stockpiled rubbish, but Mr Surtees said that it had never been in his mind that it was intended for the dump workers. “I don’t think it was in their minds at that stage either,” he said. However, the secretary of

the Canterbury sub-branch of the Labourer’s Union, Mr R. A. Lowe, said it was clear in the minds of the union negotiators that the allowance would be paid to all the workers involved, because about two hours after the settlement the representatives of the Canterbury Drivers’ Union had told him so, he said. The unions had offered to clear the stockpiled by hand, but the council had said it would use front-end loaders. The drivers of the loaders and the trucks were to have been paid dirt money, even though they would not have been handling the rubbish bags. Then the council found that the loaders were not suitable and asked labourers and drivers to handle the bags, said Mr Lowe. Mr Lowe described the council’s unwillingness to pay a total of $6.18 in dirt money as “petty.”