Meat workers to vote on strike

Press, 23 September 1989, Page 5

Meat workers to vote on strike

Meat workers at all four South Island Alliance Group plants will take a secret ballot soon to determine strike action over a relocation dispute at Ashley Meats, Kaiapoi. An unprecedented group-wide strike at the height of the killing season is the Meat Workers’ Union response to a month of fruitless talks with Alliance management which has led to pickets and a loadout ban. Alliance is relocating Ashley Lamb cutting plant workers to its Sockburn plant. The union is seeking a payment for the workers in lieu of notice. The union’s Canterbury branch secretary, Mr Geoff Taylor, said workers were angered by an ex parte injunction granted in the High Court to Alliance which prevents any further disruptive action at the Kaiapoi plant.

“We believe if it had gone through the Labour Court — the proper venue for industrial grievances — we could have made submissions on the issue,” he said. Alliance offered a relocation allowance about half that negotiated in a deal two years ago, Mr Taylor said.

“The offer is ‘take it or leave it’.” Union officials at Alliance’s Sockburn, Kaiapoi, Ocean Beach (Bluff) and Lorneville (Invercargill) plants would meet over the next week or so to discuss the likely course of industrial action.