Shearers on strike over wage dispute

Press, 11 September 1989, Page 8

Shearers on strike over wage dispute

PA Dunedin Differences between employers and shearers over award claims were not enough to justify strike action, the Otago delegate of the Sheep Owners Industrial Union of Employers, Mr Bill McCarthy, said last evening.

Shearers throughout the country were to take strike action from midnight. Mr McCarthy said employers had offered an increase of $3 a 100 for machine-shorn sheep and a $5 a 100 for blade-shorn sheep. However, the New Zealand Workers Union had claimed an increase of $5.85 a 100 for all categories of sheep shorn. Mr McCarthy said there was also a major difference in the two parties’ claims for living away allowances. The strike will leave high-country farmers facing uncertainty about the pre-lamb shearing of their fine-wool sheep. The union has agreed to delay the start of strike action in Central Otago until next week to allow the New Zealand fine-wool shearing championships to go ahead. Mr McCarthy said high-country Merinos would be lambing in a month and the strike would cause problems for

farmers with those sheep. The strike also had the ability to divide small rural communities, he said. “You can get away with a strike in the cities, but in rural communities they cause a lot of bitterness. “I don’t think the differences in our positions justify such action.” Mr McCarthy said he had sympathy for the shearers in the loss of tax concessions for their gear, but farmers also had lost some concessions. He advocated a-working party of employers and shearers to seek clarification from the Inland Revenue Department on shearers claiming back the GST component of their gear. “The average shearer would spend $3OOO a year on gear. With 12.5 per cent GST on top of that it adds up. There may be a system there to get that back.” The employers and contractors had agreed to pass on the employers’ wage increase to the shearers and shedhands, Mr McCarthy said.