Decision on strike action in works likely today

Press, 3 May 1984, Page 1

Decision on strike action in works likely today

Freezing company representatives will meet again today to decide if action should be taken under the Commerce Act against striking freezing workers.

Fourteen meat processing plants in the northern half of the South Island stopped work yesterday as the campaign of rolling stoppages by the Meat Workers’ Union continued in its third day. The works affected were the export works of Waitaki N.Z. Refrigerating, Ltd, at Smithfield, near Timaru; Fifteen Valleys near Blenheim, and Stoke; the export works of Canterbury Frozen Meat Company at Fairton, Pareora, and the company’s two works at Belfast; the N.C.F. Kaiapoi works; the Ashley Meat Exports lamb cutting plant owned by C. S. Stevens, Ltd, at Kaiapoi; the C.F.M. lamb cutting plant at Harewood; export abattoirs at Sockburn (C. S. Stevens) and Blenheim; and the Kokiri beef export plant at Stillwater. The Auckland, Northland, and Waikato areas will be hit by today’s rolling stoppages. This was announced by the president of the Auckland Freezing Workers’ Union, Mr Frank Barnard, last evening.

The Auckland union is separate from the New Zealand Meat Workers’ Union but has been working closely with the national union in the campaign to get the freezing companies into conciliation talks. Mr Barnard said that the strike by members of his union would take effect from midnight last evening to midnight today.

He said that he had known since yesterday morning that Auckland would be the target for today’s action, but had not

revealed it until yesterday afternoon.

The secretary of the Meat Workers’ Union, Mr A. J. Kennedy, has decided by chance which region will be affected each day. He has used a leather “alley shaker,” commonly used in games such as billiards, in which he has placed five numbered marbles. The one drawn out is the one which has represented the region which will be “out” fbr that day. Mr Kennedy confirmed yesterday that the marbles for each region were placed in the shaker each day, so that a region already affected could be affected again. A senior lecturer in mathematics at the University of Canterbury, Dr M. H. Smith, said that there was now a 60 per cent chance that one of the three regions already affected could be affected again today. The chance of the Canterbury region going out again today was one in five. It was already against the odds that there had been three different regions drawn, he said. All except one plant stopped killing yesterday soon after the call came from the union’s national office about 8 a.m. At the Riverlands export abattoir near Blenheim the workers continued until they held a stop-work meeting at 10 a.m., where they were addressed by the Canterbury branch secretary, Mr Wes Cameron. A union spokesman, Mr Charlie Knowles, said in Christchurch that he had told the shed officials to ask

the workers to continue working until the meeting, which had been scheduled for that time since last Friday. The divisional processing manager for C.F.M., Mr Dick Allen, said that 46,000 head of stock had been left in yards at the four export works owned by the company. At all works the byproducts had been made secure by follow-on workers before they had left. The manager of the Fifteen Valleys works, Mr R. A. Plew, said that 292 lambs had been killed by 8 a.m., but another 5020 lambs and 1033 ewes had to be held over for slaughter. At the Islington works, maintenance tradesmen joined the meat workers on strike for 24 hours in support of the call for a return to free bargaining. Mr Max Willyams, operations manager for Waitaki N.Z. Refrigerating, Ltd, said that the consequences of a region being closed down by stoppages two days in a row without warning were “pretty serious” because there would be insufficient yard room for two days stock.

Waitaki laid a formal complaint with the Labour Department on Monday after its works in Otago were among the first to be affected by the rolling stoppages. The complaint was laid under Section 125(a) of the Industrial Relations Act, which provides for a minimum of three days notice of strike action in export freezing works. Mr Willyams said that he had not yet heard back from the deoartment.