Labourers’ Union tries to recover $15,000

Press, 6 March 1984, Page 6

Labourers’ Union tries to recover $15,000

PA Invercargill The Labourers’ Union is attempting to recover $15,000 extra wages for its members who worked on the Penrod 78 oil rig in the Great South Basin. A Wellington industrial conciliator, Mr A. Castelli, heard the union’s case in Dunedin and reserved decision. The 70 or so labourers received no redundancy or severance pay — under the terms of employment they signed when they were taken on — when the rig finished its programme of two wells early in January. The union claims they should all have had the opportunity to work out

their final week of employment once notices of termination were issued. As two of the four crews were on shore at the time notice was given they worked a rolling two weeks on-two weeks off shift and they were paid only for a 40-hour week. Those on the rig were paid for a seven-day week. The union claims that a week’s notice constitutes a week’s work and that since the operators did not provide them all with a week’s work they shoujd make up the difference in wages. The Otago-Southland Employers’ Association, on behalf of the American rig operators, claims that a

notice of termination relates to time and has nothing to do with money. The union had estimated that the under-payments totalled $15,000, said its national secretary, Mr Charlie Clayton, in Wellington. Some of the rig labourers had given up full-time employment to work on the rig. “What they are doing now is anybody’s guess,” he said. Mr Clayton said they could not complain that the rig work expired within four months, because the drilling programme was intended to include two wells only, with a possibility of a third.