Commission may enter dispute over union levy

Press, 30 June 1983, Page 3

Commission may enter dispute over union levy

PA Wellington The Human Rights Commission may step into the meat workers’ levy dispute involving the rebel Whakatu freezing worker, Mr Lawrence Sumner. The commission has decided there is substance to a complaint by Mr Sumner, and two other freezing workers, that the Human Rights Act had been breached by the union. Whakatu freezing workers who refused to pay a levy to assist striking workers at Islington have been banned from the plant by other union members.

After meeting with an industrial mediator, Mr Tom Groves, in Hastings yesterday, the Whakatu rebels will take their cause to the national executive of the Meat Workers’ Union.

A Human Rights Commission report said yesterday that the commission would enter the dispute if other negotiations and discussions failed.

The report was in response to a complaint by Mr Sumner, also Mr Nigel Aitken, an employee of the Pacific Freezing Works N.Z., Ltd, Hastings, and Mr J. R. Horsburgh, a freezing worker at Fairton, near Ashburton. The three men complained that they had been threatened with loss of union membership if they did not pay the $lO a week levy. Mr Aitken said he paid “under duress."

The levy was imposed in late 1982. Since then Mr Sumner has been involved in court action against the union and his expulsion was withdrawn. But Whakatu freezing workers have refused to work alongside him.

In their complaint to the commission, Messrs Sumner and Horsburgh said the union resolutions imposing the levy breached the Economic Stablisation Regulations, 1982. The three men alleged that the Human Rights Act had been breached by the use of intimidation

The national secretary of the union, Mr A. J. Kennedy, told the commission that the donations were sought as a financial appeal, not a levy. The wording had been carefully chosen to ensure no breach of the Stabilisation Regulations. Mr Kennedy said that it was union policy that decisions of the national management committee were made as directives. This did not appear to have been understood at Whakatu or at Hastings. The commission decided that resolutions of the management committee and stb-branches at the Pacific works and Whakatu had imposed a levy. Grounds existed for alleging the levy was illegal. The commission agreed to refer the issue to the Arbitration Court if it could not be otherwise resolved.