Dispute at mushroom plant

Press, 23 July 1986, Page 11

Dispute at mushroom plant

Meadow Mushrooms has threatened to suspend harvesters who are refusing to work under the company bonus scheme, according to the Labourers’ Union. The southern branch secretary of the union, Mr Barry Brown, said that the company had advised the workers on Monday that if they continued their ban they would be suspended. The ban was imposed on July 11 when the company refused to discuss a request from the union for a house agreement. The company wants to continue paying workers under the Agricultural Market Gardens Award, which is the legal document binding minimum

wages for workers in the industry. Mr Brown said yesterday that 160 workers voted by secret ballot at the Prebbleton plant yesterday to continue their ban, in spite of the threat of suspension. He said that they then marched en masse to the manager’s office to advise him of their decision, and asked him to say who was going to be suspended. The management had replied that that would take some time to work out, Mr Brown said. The workers had decided that if one worker was suspended, the rest would strike, he said.

The chief executive of Meadow Mushrooms, Mr John Gibbons, told “The

Press” last evening, “The union has proposed a voluntary agreement which effectively isolates the company from the rest of the market garden industry. We have rejected this on the basis that we will not be made uncompetitive on our domestic and international markets, vzhich, due to current exchangerate conditions, are marginal. “The unions are attempting to force voluntary agreement on us by strike action, which we will not tolerate. “Suspensions will be issued at the appropriate time as permitted under current industrial-rela-tions legislation in a case where a worker reduces

normal output. They are not being suspended because of a withdrawal from the bonus scheme which is a payment, made on top of, and allowed for in, the award. We would also like to point out that we are paying above award rates to our weekday employees. “The company has had in operation for many years the system of oncall pickers to assist when the harvest could not be completed within normal hours. This morning (Tuesday) all employees were given the opportunity to work longer hours to complete the harvest. Weekday picker hours will not be affected by the use of on-call pickers.”