Borthwick’s Men At Belfast Stop

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30958, 14 January 1966, Page 1

Borthwick’s Men At Belfast Stop

Six hundred freezing workers walked off the job at the Belfast freezing works of Thomas Borthwick and Sons (A asia , Ltd., after a meeting of slaughtermen at 8 a.m. yesterday o • lowed by a general meeting of workers.

No stock was killed at the works yesterday.

The secretary of the Canterbury-Nelson-Marlborough Freezing Workers’ Union (Mr S. Arnst) said that he was at the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company’s Belfast works yesterday morning for a routine meeting. While he was there, the president of the union s Borthwick’s Belfast branch (Mr K. Armstrong)

called on him. Mr Armstrong told Mri Arnst that the Borthwick’s Belfast workers had gone home. They had registered a strong protest against the action of the employers in declaring that payment for knife-sharpening and cleaning of working equipment, and the agreement for three weeks’ holiday pay did not come into force on December 20, but would only take effect after the award had been ratified by the Court of Arbitration. The men at Borthwicks, said Mr Arnst, regarded the action of the employers as contrary to the over-all settlement arrived at in conciliation. Mr Arnst said the union members at Borthwick’s were also protesting over what they considered bad conditions on the slaughter board All freezing works branches in Canterbury, Nelson, and Marlborough had been notified by his union that there would be no further medical

examination of freezing workers, said Mr Arnst.

This step, he said, was taken because of the action of the employers in deciding that some clauses agreed on in conciliation would not be put into effect until ratified by the Court. Mr Arnst said that his union, like the Auckland Freezing Workers’ Union, had refused to enforce the regulation when told f the new tern s demanded by the secretary of the New Zealand Freezing Companies’ Association (Mr J. B. Walton) on other clauses in the new freezing workers’ award. The regulation was introduced by the Department of Agriculture at the insistence of West Germany and some other Common Market countries. It says that freezing workers handling meat for export must undergo a medical examination once a year. Mr Arnst said it would be correct to say that medical certificates were not embodied in the new award. But the unions assessors considered this as part and parcel of the settlement it had achieved in conciliation recently. The employers, said Mr Arnst, appeared to be trying to rest on legalities and moral undertakings.