Meetings over award talks

Press, 6 December 1985, Page 3

Meetings over award talks

Stop-work meetings will be held in Christchurch this morning for Trustee Bank Canterbury staff and for builders’ labourers and general labourers. Both groups of workers will hear reports at their separate meetings about breakdowns in their award talks. The Trustee Bank staff meeting will start at 8.30 a.m. and is expected to take about an hour, which means that banking services will be disrupted. The bank will have 14 branches open for a restricted service of deposits and withdrawals only, while the other branches will open when staff return. Talks on the labourers’ award broke down on Wednesday evening, mainly over the employers’ coun-ter-claim for shift work similar to one negotiated into the carpenters’ award recently. The meeting in Christchurch will consider taking some form of industrial action, and may try to negotiate house agreements with selected employers. Labourers employed by the Christchurch City Council

are not involved because they have a local agreement

The national secretary of the Labourers’ Union, Mr Charlie Clayton, said that labourers recognised the need for shift work on some jobs but that they should continue to be mutually agreed by bosses and workers. He said that the carpenter’s decision to accept shift work had put labourers under enormous pressure. The conciliation council would now probably have to be disbanded, which might mean that it would not be negotiated this wage round, said Mr Clayton. In Auckland, employers predict problems for the building industry, now experiencing a boom. The president of the Auckland Employers’ Association, Mr Bill Jarvie, blamed average award settlements of 18 per cent, which he said would start to bite in the middle of next year. The inevitable result he said would be many firms “going broke,” and a dramatic upturn in unemployment.