Union’s Black-Ban Threat

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31003, 8 March 1966, Page 1

Union’s Black-Ban Threat

If any more workers were dismissed from the Upper Hutt factory of Dunlop, New Zealand, Ltd., the rest of the factory’s 250 workers would immediately walk out, said the president of the Northern, Wellington and Canterbury Rubber Workers’ Association (Mr A. J. Neary) in an address at a rubber workers’ stop-work meeting in Christchurch yesterday. “At that point, we will be left with no option but to blacklist all Dunlop’s products throughout New Zealand,” said Mr Neary. The union, he said, had it from a “very reliable source” that Dunlop’s was prepared to spend £150,000 to defeat the rubber workers’ union in the dispute. “If we declare Dunlop’s products black, none of them will move around this country,” he said. Mr Neary was addressing 150 rubber workers from Dunlop’s Woolston factory in the Druid’s Hall, Portland street. Woolston. The stop-work meeting was also attended by delegates from other Christchurch rubber factories and officials from Canterbury and Wellington rubber workers’ unions. “DIRECTIONS FROM LONDON” Mr Neary said that the Dunlop company in New Zealand, under specific directions from St. James House, London, had drawn up a blue-print on how to gain complete control and dictate the terms of employment, leaving the union

"without a feather to fly with.” If the Dunlop company continued in its unreasonable way, he said, it was heading for disaster. “The Dunlop factory will become an empty shell without people.” The dispute is over attempts to introduce time and motion studies into Dunlop’s Upper Hutt factory. Two workers were recently dismissed by the firm because they refused to use machines which were being timed for their output. According to a company spokesman, Dunlop’s expected to lay off employees at its Upper Hutt tyre factory within the next few weeks,, and more than 100 might be affected.

Yesterday’s stop-work meeting at Woolston unanimously adopted a resolution that pledged support for any action the Wellington Rubber Workers’ Union deemed necessary to have the two dismissed workers reinstated.

The resolution also pledged support for the defence of the rights of rubber workers’ union members in all respects. FIRESTONE SUPPORT The meeting also unanimously received a resolution from the Firestone branch of the Canterbury Rubber Workers Union which said: “Firestone rubber workers wholeheartedly support the rubber workers of Dunlop, Upper Hutt, in their present dispute with the Dunlop company.” They would also never be a party to work under any incentive bonus scheme that was tainted with compulsion and foisted upon the workers without first being discussed and agreed on by the three parties: the union officials, the company concerned and the workers, said the resolution. Mr Neary, in his address, said that the dispute had been precipitated by Dunlop’s. They had been producing tyres “flat out” for some time

I at Upper Hutt, till they had • stacks of tyres up to the ceiling. The motor firms now had ■ more tyres than they had had for years in storage from Dunlop’s factory. Mr Neary said that all Dunlop’s efforts to get tyres to the motor-vehicle factories at the outset of the dispute would be in vain. “Those tyres will not be fitted on the cars unless this dispute is settled,” he said. Once Dunlops were declared “black” he said, “the workers will refuse to fit them on the cars.” OBJECTION TO STOPWATCHES Mr Neary said the union objected to workers at Upper Hutt being timed with stopwatches “like racehorses and greyhounds.” Mr Neary said that the Arbitration Court, in 1961 was not prepared to put a clause into the rubber workers’ award permitting Dunlop’s to use stopwatches on their employees. But now Dunlop’s were demanding to impose a system that the court had refused in 1961. The union, said Mr Neary, had no objection to methods study, but the history of stopwatches was a bad one. Mr Neary said it had been argued by Dunlop’s at Upper Hutt that they wished to apply the time and motion tests to the machines and not the individuals. “Once they have obtained the capacity of a machine by! some scientific means, then they will relate that timing to the individuals speed.” he said. Reporters were admitted to yesterday’s stop-work meeting. — (