Another engineering firm to lay off workers

Press, 4 November 1983, Page 3

Another engineering firm to lay off workers

The lack of work for the engineering industry in Canterbury has meant that another big manufacturer, Canterbury Engineering, Ltd, in Riccarton, will have to lay off between six and 10 workers by Christmas. The secretary of the Canterbury branch of the Engineers’ Union, Mr R. J. Todd, said that the number was not as haigh as had been intimated to him earlier this week, but he regarded 10 in a work-force of 60 as “substantial.”

“What is most disturbing

is that the company in recent times has placed tenders for New Zealand Electricity Division transmission towers, two of which were worth $1 million each and the other s¥2 million, as well as a s¥2 million tender for the Clyde dam power scheme switching gear, but all these tenders have gone to Japan.

“These are Government contracts, and the thing I ask is whose unemployment difficulties is this Government trying to resolve — New Zealand’s or Japan’s?”

said Mr Todd. Canterbury Engineering’s redundancies have come only days after Andersons Engineering, Ltd, announced that 98 would be made redundant. Mr Todd has arranged a meeting on Monday of members of Parliament, engineering industry representatives, union officials, arid officers of the Labour and Trade and Industry departments to discuss what Mr Todd called the plight of the engineering industry in Canterbury.