Affco,
which is owned by the wealthy Talley family, have announced they have
locked out union members at their Affco freezing works after they
encountered resistance to new provisions to their collective
contracts from the Meat Workers’ Union who object to the pay and
working conditions being put forward by Affco management.
Management
and union negotiators have been wrangling over proposed new pay and
working conditions for the last eighteen months with Affco management
announcing that it was not going to let the union dictate how the
company ran its business. On Wednesday, February 29th,
2011, Affco locked out a total of 760 union workers at their five
meat works that they will be indefinitely locked out until they sign
their new contracts, a situation that is widely predicted to cause
great hardship in communities already hit hard by unemployment,
especially in small towns like Moerewa where the Meat Workers’
Union represents 122 workers or nearly 70% of Affco’s work force
and 8% of its population of 1460.
The
lockout is expected to adversely impact on local businesses as most
workers spend their money in the town. Meat Workers’ Union
Secretary, Laurie Nankivell, adds
that the Affco meat works is the largest employer by far in the town
and the lockout will also impact upon the wider community as most
families are reliant on the one income from the meat works.
Community
The
impact on the community in Moerewa isn’t just going to hit the
families of the workers who have been locked out. The principal of
Moerewa School, Keri
Milne-Ihimaera, remarked that "When there’s uncertainty
or stress in families, children are affected by that and the Affco
lockout will certainly cause both of things to occur…. Maybe
children may not have as much food in the house as they might usually
have, or maybe it’s going to be stationery items they might need that
would not usually be a problem."
Roger
Middlemass, President of the Meat Workers’ Union, states the issue
isn’t so much about the 4.3% pay increase being offered to the
workers but about the conditions including concerns about the
setting of manning and process line speeds, random drug-testing
procedures, training employees and operational parameters for
processing lines when new technology was introduced.
Affco
spokesman and operations director Rowen Ogg stated there had been
nine challenges filed with the Employment Court contesting their
management and operations procedures and claimed the dispute was a
battle for control of the meat works with the union was seeking to
increase its power and impose restrictions that most of their
competitors didn’t have to contend with.
The
claims made by the management of Affco would be laughable in today’s
employment climate where employers can, and do, routinely ride
roughshod over the rights of workers, especially new workers covered
by the 90 day “hire and fire at will” law, with the full support
of the right-wing bourgeoisie media and the National-led government
who continue to bring up the bogeyman of “cloth cap unionism” to
garner support for the scabs and bourgeoisie.
To
make matters worse, the company has stated that "We
have a significant number of our staff who have signed individual
employment agreements, and plants will continue to operate."
This is just corporate-speak meaning they have hired scab labour to
break the union and to smash worker solidarity by sewing seeds of
bitterness and distrust amongst the workers.
These
sorts of lockouts are nothing unusual and have been used by Affco to
bully workers into signing individual contracts that undermine union
and worker solidarity and hard fought working conditions. Last
year CMP locked out 100 workers from their Marton meat works for
four months, reducing workers to beggars who had to rely on benefits
and church charity to put food on their tables. Now it is the
turn of union workers in Moerewa, Feilding, Auckland and Whanganui’s
Imlay plant to be locked out.
In
recent days workers have also come under attack at the Port of
Auckland where workers are also being faced with union bashing
contracts and punitive pay and working conditions on their new
contracts.
Now,
more than ever, workers need to rally together in solidarity to fight
these attacks on their fellow unionised workers because this isn’t
about greedy workers demanding too much money and supposedly “gold
plated” working conditions. It is about workers losing the
right to be part of a union that represents their interests and
losing the pay and conditions that have been hard won by workers in
the past which are slowly being eaten away by union bashing
legislation passed within the last twenty-odd years and employers
resorting to increasingly thuggish and bullying behaviour from the
capitalists as they try to hold onto their power within the workplace
at any cost.
In
the longer run only a socialist society will bring about the end of
the exploitation and oppression of the working classes of New
Zealand, including our meat workers but, in the meantime, we have to
support workers’ organisations, including the trade unions and the
Labour Party, and fight to turn them into the militant worker
organisation they should be so the the capitalists can’t play
workers off against one another and smash the hard won b working
conditions of the meat workers, the watersiders and the public
servants.
Support
the Meat workers
Fight
for a collective agreement