Stop-work leaves young lambs in yards overnight

Press, 25 October 1985, Page 5

Stop-work leaves young lambs in yards overnight

Hundreds of newly weaned and milk lambs were held at the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company’s Belfast works last night, after a meeting disrupted the killing chain. About 220 meat workers met at noon yesterday and decided to stop work for the day in protest against the company’s refusal to rehire three slaughtermen, according to a company official. The company’s assistant general manager, processing, Mr Dick Allan, said the company had decided not to rehire the men for the next season because of their absenteeism in previous seasons.

Each had been sent three letters of warning by the company over the years, he said. As a result of the stopwork, about 1500 lambs had - to be kept overnight in the works yards. Although killing was expected to resume today, Mr Allan said, the backlog created by the stop-work would mean that 1500 lambs would have to be kept in the yards over the weekend. Most of the stock for today’s killing had either arrived or was on its way. Fortunately only weaned lambs would be kept over

the week-end, and should i survive without any problems, he said. Under an agreement between Federated Farmers [ and the Meat Workers’ ! Union, all the stock should have been killed before any strike action was taken, Mr ■ Allan said. The workers had ; not kept to this agreement, nor had they given notice of ; their intention to stop work, ; as required under the award. The company had met • union officials but its offer to take the matter to the > disputes committee had not been accepted. Mr Allan I said discussions with the • union would continue.

The organiser of the union’s Canterbury branch, Mr R. G. Kirk, did not agree that there had been a walkout at the works. The workers had met to discuss the management’s refusal to rehire three longterm slaughtermen, Mr Kirk said. He believed that the meeting had continued half an hour over the usual finishing time, so the workers had left. The union regretted the lambs being left, particularly the milk lambs, in the yard overnight. It was not union policy to leave any, stock in the yard overnight, Mr Kirk said. He would look into this today.