2 December 2015

Union seeks unprecedented intervention in AFFCO Talley dispute

The NZ Meat Workers Union is seeking unprecedented judicial intervention in the ongoing dispute and unlawful lockout of AFFCO Talley workers, citing serious and sustained actions that have made it impossible for workers to achieve a fair outcome in collective bargaining.

In a provision never used under Section 50J of the Employment Relations Act, the Employment Relations Authority may fix the terms and conditions of a collective agreement where the breach of good faith has been serious and sustained and undermined the bargaining. The union’s case, including an application for urgency and removal to the Employment Court was filed on Monday.

This comes two weeks after a full bench of the Employment Court found that AFFCO Talley had unlawfully locked out union members in order to gain individual agreements to their advantage and in doing so undermined the union and collective bargaining.

Since that decision union members have faced an ongoing barrage of resistance with shift changes, supervisor bullying, preference for non-union members and the suspension of two union delegates who went on plant to help distressed union members.

AFFCO Talley workers in Wairoa are still not back at work after nine weeks. The company proposal to have them return to work on a segregated night shift has not been resolved. Hawkes Bay Hides, with a smaller number of workers is in a similar position.

This week, the company has indicated it will seek site agreements based entirely on the oppressive individual agreements that it imposed through unlawful lockout.

“It’s regrettable that once again we are forced to rely on recourse to the Courts to have some balance and fairness restored in the employment relationship between the union and AFFCO Talley’,” says Graham Cooke, National Secretary of the NZ Meat Workers Union.

“Our major concern is for workers and their whanau who have suffered impoverishment, unsafe work and intolerable conditions that no worker in New Zealand should have to put up with.

“With Christmas coming up, there needs to be an urgent resolution to this untenable position” Mr Cooke says.

ENDS

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