PAID OFF

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19828, 30 April 1927, Page 7

PAID OFF

BALCLUTHA BUTCHERS Result of Attempt to Dictate to Management FARMERS TO MAN THE BOARD [Per Press Association.] DUNEDIN, April 29. Trouble developed among the butchers at the Fincgand freezing works at Balclutha yesterday. The men insisted on a butcher being employed who had come from Burnside, but had not previously been working at Finegand. 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, and the result was that the men were informed that if they did not reconsider their attitude they would all be paid off. r This the butchers refused to do, and accordingly they were paid off in the afternoon. At the saleyards, Mr John Christie, one of tho directors, addressed the assembled farmers and made an appeal for volunteer labour to man the killing board till the end of the season. The fanners who were present endorsed the stand taken by the directorate, and it is thought that there will be little difficulty experienced in carrying on. Mr Christie stated that everything had been working so smoothly at the wdrks, the relationship between workers and 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 a real grievance, the directors would have been only to pleased to remedy it, but the management objected to ‘being forced to employ a man against its wishes.