Firm lays off 48 staff

Press, 24 April 1986, Page 5

Firm lays off 48 staff

Almost half the staff of the Adidas footwear factory in Wairakei Road, Christchurch, are being laid off. Forty-eight of the factory’s 106 staff received redundancy notices yesterday, most of them to take effect on April 30. The general manager, Mr Tony Ineson, blamed the retrenchment on the Government’s free-market

policies. “It reflects the problems the footwear industry in general is going through,” he said. “We are feeling the effects of an increasing volume of imports, excessively high interest rates, and the seasonal slowdown in demand for our product. “We are doing all we can to assist staff in find-

ing alternative employment,” he said. Forty-one footwear workers and a clerical worker will leave on April 30. The other six — four storemen and packers, an engineer, and a cafeteria worker — would have work for a further two or three weeks, said Mr Ineson. The president of the Footwear Workers’ Union,

Mr Toby Jordan, said that the 41 members of his union unanimously accepted a redundancy agreement put to them yesterday. The factory is owned by O’Briens Footwear, of which Lane Walker Rudkin is the majority shareholder. The O’Briens factory at Kaiapoi was not affected by the retrenchment, Mr Ineson said.