Wage-freeze strikes widen

Press, 18 May 1984, Page 5

Wage-freeze strikes widen

PA Wellington Industrial disputes affecting cleaners, meat workers, and coachworkers challenging the Government’s wage freeze continued yesterday. Workers at N.Z. Forest Products’ Kinleith timber mill, however, returned to work after a 32-hour stoppage in support of free wage bargaining. In the Wellington cleaner.'’ dispute Crothall Property Services filed an injunction in the High Court yesterday seeking to restrain the cleaners’ union from interfering in contracts with customers and employees. The police were also used to escort non-union cleaners to work at BP House in the central city yesterday morning.

Crothalls is seeking damages from the union, the amount of which was unspecified, said a spokesman

for the company, Mr Richard Hale of the Wellington Employers' Association. The Labour Department’s inspector of factories, Mr Les Cope, said that Crothalls had filed a complaint requesting the department to initiate legal action over an alleged attempt to break the wage-freeze regulations.

A report was now under investigation for head office. The injunction, which will be heard on Monday, is an attempt to restrain the union, its officers or members, from inducing any breach of the company’s contracts or from unlawfully interfering in them.

Crothalls also wants to restrain the union’s Maikuku cleaning company from doing work on Crothalls contracts.

Cleaners at Crothalls have been on strike for three weeks. They want an

extra 49c an hour. In a related dispute Todd Motors has sent a letter to each of the 350 striking coachworkers at its plant asking them to go back to work. The company’s industrial relations manager, Mrs Shirley Homewood, said the letter did not make any promises because the company was powerless to agree to union demands.

The Coachworkers' Union wants Todd Motors to join it in an approach to the Government for an exemption from the wage-freeze regulations.

The police were yesterday following up two assault complaints made after an incident on the picket line outside BP House on Wednesday morning. More than a dozen police yesterday escorted four nonunion cleaners into the building and prevented pick-

eters from blocking their path. The West Coast (North Island) branch of the Meat Workers’ Union stopped work at eight freezing works and 13 other companies yesterday. Dannevirke was excluded at first as killing is only done three days a week there, but the workers decided at a meeting to join the stoppage. The union’s secretary, Mr Ken Findlay, said such developments were what was keeping the Minister of Labour, Mr Bolger, “beating the air with impotent rage.” The case by the Freezing Companies’ Association for an order for a return to work by the union will resume in the Arbitration Court on Tuesday.

The direct cost to farmers in the first week of the meat industry’s rolling stoppages had been about

$500,000, a Federated Farmers spokesman said. The Rangitikei branch president, Mr Graeme Gordon, said the figure was based on the loss of weight on lambs during the stoppages.

“The direct cost to fanners during the first week of the stoppages is estimated at some $500,000 as lambs lose an average of a kilogram of live weight during each stoppage — a minimum of $1 a head,” he said. Mr Gordon said farmers were very aware that the total cost of the stoppages was borne by farmers alone. In Auckland, the union campaign for a return to free wage bargaining resumes today with a stoppage by engineers at New Zealand Steel’s mills.

At Union Carbide 133 workers, who have been on strike for six weeks over the right to bargain, will also meet. All 70 members of the Ice Cream Workers’ Union at the General Foods Tip Top factory in Johnsonville stopped work yesterday. They will meet again on Monday to consider the company’s response to proposals for a new award and an application for an exemption from the wage freeze.

A stopwork meeting will be held at James Hardie, Ltd, in Penrose where 60 staff are suspended. They have refused to work new machinery because they do not have a pay agreement for it.

About 500 engineers at the Motunui synthetic fuel plant will stop work for 24 hours today in support of free wage bargaining. The Engineers’ Union organiser, Mr Pat Quinn, said the decision had been made at a site meeting, yesterday.