‘Union ignores request by wool workers’

Press, 10 January 1987, Page 3

‘Union ignores request by wool workers’

Wool testing workers in Napier and Christchurch have voted almost unanimously in secret ballots to Join the Woollen Workers’ Union, but the union has ignored a request from workers to allow them to join, according to an employer spokesman, Mr Tony Ward.

Mr Ward said from Napier that 23 of the 64 workers at the Christchurch warehouse were on strike and seven of the 70 at Napier.

The Christchurch striking workers have been picketing daily.

Mr Ward said that the Federation of Labour had rejected a proposal which would have allowed workers to decide in a Labour Department-con-trolled secret ballot whether they wanted to be represented by the Public Service Association or the Woollen Workers’ Union.

Mr Ward said that the Woollen Workers’ Union had ignored a written request from workers to join because it did not want to get offside with the P.S.A.

The national secretary

of the union, Mr Paddy O’Flannagan, said from Wellington yesterday that he did not think the request from a group of workers late last year was a genuine request They had been “put up to it” by the authority. Mr O’Flannagan said that about 60 per cent of the workers were university students working two or three months over their holidays. The union did not want to get involved in the dispute and be accused of body-snatching.

Mr Ward said that it was nonsense for the union movement to say employers were trying to decide which union workers should belong to. The employer just wanted workers legally represented.

The authority has arranged for a conciliator to. hear its case on February 16 and 17 in Christchurch. The Woollen Workers’ Union has been requested by the conciliator to attend, but Mr O’Flannagan said that no-one from the union would attend because they would be at the union’s annual conference.