Meat processors

The Southmore meat processing plant 30km south of Christchurch is represented by the New Zealand Meat Workers union.

(The NDU represents the two Auckland meat processing plants, Foodmore and Cabnet Ready Meats which are not currently in negotiations.)

• The New Zealand Meat Workers union is seeking a 16 month contract with a 12% pay rise which would take workers up to $15.50 an hour in a first step towards pay parity with other workers in the industry.

• The company's final offer was a 3.5% pay rise in the first year and 3% in the second year, despite the fact that the union had dropped additional claims such as overtime, weekend rates and piece-rates for production workers.

• Progressive want to treat their meat workers as though they are supermarket workers and have used this argument to justify paying them the same low wages that they pay their supermarket workers.

• The meat processors only earn an average of $13.73 an hour - including an incentive bonus - despite doing the same job and being as productive as other workers in the meat industry who are earning between $18 and $30 an hour.

• It is indicative of how the company treats its workers when it took them 100 days to respond to the union’s initiation of bargaining, and only after workers threatened a strike ballot. (Foodstuffs, who own Pak ‘n Save, sourced their meat from companies paying the standard rate.)

• Butchers who had worked in Progressive supermarkets for as long as 20 years have recently been made redundant in Auckland to make way for Progressive’s centralised meat factory.