Workers levied to help mill families

Press, 2 September 1986, Page 8

Workers levied to help mill families

PA Hamilton Levies have been imposed on some Waikato workers to provide cash for the families of lockedout Kawerau mill workers. Some workers at big industrial worksites are being levied, while unions have set up a voluntary support fund. Kinleith’s combined site unions chairman, Mr Graham Holmes, said support varied between unions at the N.Z. Forest Products plant near Tokoroa.

Workers there and the people of Tokoroa knew the suffering Kawerau people were going through, especially those who had been through the 1980 industrial dispute at Kinleith. Kinleith unions were

very concerned about Forest Products’ plans to buy a manufacturing plant in Australia just a few months after it announced more than 700 job losses at Kinleith.

“They are expanding overseas at the expense of workers being laid off in this country,” he said.

Some wives of Tasman Pulp and Paper mill workers had been afraid to join in a protest at the mill gates at Kawerau yesterday, an organiser said.

About 70 women gathered to meet the company’s director of operations, Mr Graham Ogilvie, and to give him a list of six points they wished to make.

Their spokeswoman, Mrs Christine Armstrong, said some who had not joined the protest feared

not for themselves but for their husbands.

A lot of women had been supported by their husbands but it was a difficult dispute as there was only a small proportion of the town holding the rest back, she said. The Tasman wives were "hacked off’ over the strike and there was a feeling of helplessness among them. The idea of the protest was to try to get all the women together to approach the mill’s management.

The demonstration came just two days before the mill is to be closed indefinitely and 800 workers laid off. A further 500 salaried staff will stay on.

The company locked out 640 pulp and paper workers on August 5 after

a two-week strike. A Tauranga carpenter concerted about the welfare of families involved in the Kawerau dispute has launched a food appeal in the western Bay of Plenty.

Mr Dave Mackay began the appeal yesterday for the wives and children of Kawerau workers who will be unemployed from Wednesday when the mill closes. “I don’t care about the policies of the thing,” he said. “I just feel for the families down there who are in need of food at the moment”

Mr Mackay said he thought of the idea last Thursday and got in touch with the Kawerau Salvation Army which said there was a “definite need" for aid.