Union threat withdrawn

Press, 6 October 1987, Page 9

Union threat withdrawn

The showdown between the Meat Workers’ Union and the Fortex Group predicted yesterday did not eventuate. The union’s national secretary, Mr Jack Scott, said the threatened action through the newly formed Labour Court had been withdrawn because the company had said it would not go ahead with the planned double shift on the slaughterboard floor without the agreement of the Canterbury branch of the Meat Workers’ Union. The company had planned to introduce the shift from yesterday whether or not it reached agreement with the union.

The managing director of Fortex, Mr Graeme Thompson, said the company sought urgent negotiations with the

union and had been seeking talks with the branch for the last few weeks because the company had an agreement with the branch, not the national union.

The workers selected for the new shift were standing by and he hoped to have the new shift running next week. The planned double shift will be the first on the slaughterboard floor in the New Zealand meat industry. He said the company already had shift work in the lamb-cutting rooms for further processing. The new arrangement for the slaughterboard will be a double shift, one group working from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the other working from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. The lambcutting shift had been running for almost two years.