Some Canty bank staff may strike before Christmas

Press, 20 December 1986, Page 11

Some Canty bank staff may strike before Christmas

By NIGEL MALTHUS Trust Bank Canterbury staff could be on strike at one of the busiest times of the year — the two days before Christmas. They will decide at a stop-work meeting on Tuesday morning whether to join their colleagues of the Auckland, Northland, Waikato, and Bay of Plenty trustee banks in a two-day strike over their award talks.

Stop-work meetings will also be held by trustee bank staff in the other eight regions, giving rise to a potential national stoppage.

The secretary of the Clerical Works’ Association, Mr John Slater, predicted a large majority in favour of a strike. The decision would be binding on all members, he said.

Mr Slater said that trustee bank staff wanted comparable wages with trading bank staff (who are members of the Bank Officers’ Union). Because they could not reach a

settlement, the union suggested taking the case to the Arbitration Court, but the employers refused.

"Basically what we are saying is we wish to use legal avenues to solve our differences, but we are being blocked by the employers.” The wage differences between trustee bank and trading bank staff were between $250 and $l3OO a year, depending on grading. The union sought wage increases of between 8 per cent and 23 per cent to make up, said Mr Slater. The clerical union told employers yesterday that action could be averted if they agreed to refer the award to arbitration. However, the response from Mr Graham Perfect, the employers’ advocate was that the union was “doing its members in the eye” by rejecting the employers’ wage offer.

Strike action would be “negative and futile, considering the weight of the

employers’ offers,” said Mr Perfect.

Employers had acknowledged the need to raise wages, and had made offers of between 8 per cent and 13 per cent. Most staff would have had rises of 9.5 per cent to 10 per cent had the offers been accepted, he said. The strike would get “little sympathy.” The manager of Trust Bank Canterbury, Mr Frank Dickson, would not speculate on the effect of a two-day stoppage just before Christmas. Nor could he say how the bank could cope with the stop-work meeting, even if staff voted to return to work after.

There had been a stopwork meeting on December 5.

“At that time something like half our branches — certainly all the key branches — were open,” said Mr Dickson.

“Others opened when staff came back to work. By 11 a.m. most were fully operational.”