Print workers target M.P.s to stop sale

Press, 16 May 1989, Page 6

Print workers target M.P.s to stop sale

PA Wellington The member of Parliament Mr Peter Neilson’s Miramar electorate was targeted by Government Printing Office workers during the week-end as part of a campaign to stop the office’s imminent sale. Public Service Association members distributed leaflets throughout the Miramar business district on Saturday. They said they chose his electorate because, as Associate Minister of State-Owned Enterprises, Mr Neilson was directly responsible for the department and the plan to sell it.

The Government recently announced it would be sold soon after June. The department’s 800 workers have been concerned about their future since the Government decided to sell it a year ago.

Leaflets were also distributed at Masterton, site of the department’s largest printing operation. More are intended for the Christchurch electorates

of the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Palmer, and the Minister of External Trade and Relations Mr Moore, as Christchurch is the main distribution point for the department’s South Island material.

The leaflet says tens of thousands of dollars in wages paid to Government Print staff in those communities could be lost once the department is sold.

“Where is the evidence that the sale of this asset makes economic sense,” the leaflet says. “Is the sale in the’interests of the Government, your community, the public, and the staff of the G.P.0.?”

It says people should contact the M.P. named on the leaflet “and ask for an explanation.”

Mr Ricky Clapham, who chairs the P.S.A.’s Government Print industrial group, said the issues concerned had not been canvassed publicly since the decision to sell the department was announced.