Manawatu Exhibition: Trade Union Action
The rise of industrial action, organisation and militancy
Since the end of the 1951 waterfront lockout, industrial relations had been pretty subdued – until 1967, when the Arbitration Court, which set wage rates in the private sector, handed down a nil wage order. This marked the beginning of the end of the arbitration system and set the platform for the rise of industrial action, on-the-job organisation and militancy in the 1970s. Job delegate committees developed and became active on all the major industrial sites and other groups of workers also began to protest low wages and conditions.
Manawatu Photographs
Longburn freezing workers walk along the Square from the Labour Department in August 1972, after registering as unemployed. They were part of a protest against the termination of employment of eleven chamber hands whose total service at the works was 21 years. The men were supported by 200 of their former workmates who wanted a written seniority agreement at the works to protect their jobs.
About 50 Longburn freezing workers picket the Palmerston North offices of the Labour Department in March 1975. They carried signs and distributed leaflets complaining of a lockout. The workers were former beef boning room staff and beef butchers. Talks for a new incentive scheme for the boning room had broken down and they had been out of work for three weeks. John Braithwaite, in shorts, exchanges a friendly greeting with Roger Middlemass, who was shed president, Wellington branch president, and union organiser for the NZ Meatworkers Union.
Post Office Workers Union members were among 600 protesting public servants who gathered outside the Opera House in Palmerston North on 1 October 1976 before a meeting to hear progress reports on state service pay talks with the government. October 1976 was a time of considerable upheaval across the whole state sector. In January Prime Minister Muldoon (elected in 1975) had cut subsidies on milk, butter and other basic items and raised charges for electricity, petrol, and postal services. A cost-of-living general wage increase offered was way short of the price increases. Cuts to post office staff numbers meant 677 employees lost their jobs . Colin Keegan from the Post Office Workers Union is on the left.