MORE TROUBLE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 30 April 1927, Page 8

MORE TROUBLE.

AMONG THE BUTCHERS. By Telegraph—Press Association. DUNEDIN, April 29. Trouble developed among the butchers .at the Pinegand freezing works, Balclutlia, yesterday. The men insisted on a butcher being employed who had come from Burnside, but liad not previously been working at Pinegand. The manager objected, and the men presented an ultimatum. To-day the directors of the South Otago Freezing Company held a meeting at the works in the morning, and the result was that the men were informed that if they did not reconsider their attitude they would all be paid off at 1 o’clock. This the butchers refused to do, and accordingly they were paid off in the afternoon.

At the saleyards, Mr John Christie, one of the directors, addressed the assembled farmers, and made an appeal for volunteer labour, to man the killing boards till the end of the season. Farmers who were present endorsed the stand taken by the directorate, and it is thought that there will be little difficulty in carrying on.

Mr Christie stated that everything had been working so smoothly at the works, the relationship between workers afad management being all that could be desired, that the demand made by the butchers came “like a bolt from the blue,” but the directors were determined not to be dictated to in that manner. If the men had had a real grievance the directors would have been only too pleased to remedy it, but the management objected to being forced to employ a man against its wishes.