No trouble at mill after workers score a big windfall

Friday 27th April 2001

By Jock Anderson

New Kawerau pulp mill owner Carter Holt Harvey has had to make an embarrassing backdown to the pulp and paper workers' union, giving about 130 workers a one-off $10,000 sweetener - just for agreeing to carrying on working.

A privately mediated one-off "transfer fee" deal, was expected to cost Carter Holt and previous mill owner Norske Skog, which will share the cost, about $1.3 million.

The $10,000 "transfer" payment - twice what the workers originally sought - was agreed last week in mediation before employment law specialist Kit Toogood QC.

In the face of Carter Holt's recent $311 million purchase of the pulp operation of the Kawarau mill from Norske Skog pulp and paper workers would not agree to transfer their labour to Carter Holt under a proposed operator service regime.

Unionists, who wanted to be direct employees of Carter Holt, rejected proposals to cover them with what they considered an inferior deal.

The dispute, inherited by Carter Holt, began last Christmas over an operator-service proposal by Norske Skog.

But it then developed to the point where both companies faced court action filed by the union earlier this month.

Court action was withdrawn as a result of agreement to go to mediation and the sweetener deal, ratified by workers last Monday, is to be settled next Monday.

The proposed agreement amounted to an effective lockout, according to a union source who said Carter Holt, while it came as a late party to the dispute, had little choice but to agree to the deal if it wanted continuity of production.

Carter Holt this week withdrew from the South Island ports' dispute mediation process after waiting more than six weeks to get a response from the waterfront workers' union to its compromise proposal, saying further mediation was futile.

Chief executive Chris Liddell said the most recent offer of a solution the company put to the union more than a week ago was eminently reasonable but had again drawn no response.

For five months Carter Holt and its contractors had gone well beyond any requirements of good faith to move the dispute forward," he said.

"We have tried to find a compromise with the union.

"On each occasion that we have offered a solution they have not had the courtesy to respond or even give any indication that they intend to respond," he said.

"It is public knowledge that the mediator has rejected all the arguments put up by the union in support of their campaign and we have reached the end of our patience," Mr Liddell said.

He said Carter Holt would rely on the protection of the law to ensure its right to load ships was no longer interfered with.

The union had run a campaign of misinformation and intimidation which had damaged New Zealand's reputation as an exporter and threatened a huge export opportunity emerging in the forestry sector, Mr Liddell said.

"It is now time to move on."

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