MUST READ GUEST BLOG: Darien Fenton – A chilling move from New Zealand’s most notorious company?
Social media has become a means of workers talking to each other and organising around their issues and disputes, but now Talley’s is trying to shut this down in the name of “good faith”.
Everyone knows Talley’s record : they’ve been found guilty of multiple breaches of workers rights over decades, and more recently unlawful lockouts of workers and breaches of good faith in their North Island AFFCO plants.
Many AFFCO and Talley’s workers have taken to Facebook with secret sites where they can express their opinion. The Meat Workers Union has set up its Jobs that Count website, Facebook and Twitter account – initially to deal with issues in the meat industry as a whole, but increasingly to build support for MWU members who are being treated badly by AFFCO Talleys. It’s a legitimate means of reaching out, but not according to Talleys.
Talley’s has repeatedly banned union organiser access despite Employment Authority decisions, refuses union meetings in work-time, have closed union offices and won’t allow the delegates to meet. Union newsletters are banned, with one worker being disciplined for even reading one.
According to their Human Resources manager “delegates don’t exist”.
In August last year, the company filed breaches of good faith in the Court alleging that because the Meat Workers Union is a “cornerstone supporter” of the Daily Blog, posts from John Minto and Mike Treen on the Daily Blog were evidence of the union’s breach of good faith. This was part of their claim to end bargaining with the MWU under the National Party’s new laws.
This was adjourned sine die when a full bench of the Employment Court ruled on the company’s breaches of good faith last November and their unlawful lockouts of AFFCO workers when they attempted to implement company individual agreements last year. But these claims are still before the court and due to be heard in July 2016, along with the MWU’s application to fix the terms of the collective agreement, under a never before used provision of the Employment Relations Act.
So, just to up the anti : the latest, AFFCO Talleys have filed for an “interim compliance order” requiring the Meat Workers Union, its officials and agents to “comply with the duty of good faith by ceasing and desisting from publishing on any website, twitter account or other site viewable on the internet, items referring to the applicant or its parent company or officers that are unbalanced, misleading, untruthful, and/or derogatory until further order of the Authority.”
And in a further claim they seek to use “good faith” to control who represents the workers with a specific claim to exclude Darien Fenton MWU Organising Director from meetings and mediations.
So who’s affected? The “officials” of the union include every elected rank and file Shed President, Secretary and Vice President who work in meat works in addition to those owned or controlled by Talley’s. It could also arguably include every member of the Meat Workers Union because the union is its members.
Is the Daily Blog affected? Is anyone who publishes anything negative about Talley’s an agent? Yes probably, under the Talley view of the world.
Remember, this company already took the petty action of banning the wearing of harmless union t shirts to and from work, saying they are “intimidating” and like “gang insignia”
Now they want to shut all dissent down and dictate who they will deal with as representatives of the workers.
This is dangerous territory and needs to be resisted.
Darien is a former Labour Party MP and advocate for the MWU
I wonder if the Righties (who are so keen to support free speech when it comes to Wicked Campers) will also fight for the rights of workers’ freedom to speak their mind?
I think I’ll be waiting an awful long time.
The AFFCO/TALLEY Corporation is already sighted for using slave labour aboard their ships, so next they will attempt to enslave their children as 17th century child labour workers symbolising a return to the dark ages of the 1700’s?
Not correct. That honour goes to Iwi. Talleys worked with unions to stop the slave ships that Iwi were using to fish their quota.
When is the left and the worker’s movement going to wake up the the elephant in the room here? Torturing, abusing and killing animals is a violence that manifests in the treatment of the very workers who operate these hideous places of slaughter. The comparison of the slaughterhouse to the holocaust is a very real one and is dependent for its continuation on the ignorance and compliance of the population who buy into this industrial scale cruelty. The industrial meat complex is a ruthless, exploitative corporate enterprise and is engaged in the most insidious forms of propaganda ever devised. Resist the horror at the heart of our societies because the exploitation and abuse of animals equates exactly to the exploitation and abuse of slaughterhouse workers.
But does that apply to peas and carrots?
No, not quite the same, because peas and carrots are not sentient beings. But the companies that own the means of production of peas and carrots are often the very same companies involved in the animal abuse industries, so in this sense the workers are equally exploited and discounted
Hi Paul. Hate to burst your bubble but all life is sentient plants communicate and feel pain. Research at our own universities prove it. In order for you to live something else must die.
“Vegetable rights and peace!” – Neil, ‘The Young Ones’
Peas and carrots are not sentient beings. However, since the same companies are involved the workers are equally abused and discounted no doubt
The rumour around is that the Talleys will start systematically replacing local staff with Chinese guest workers. There is much of that going on already at the Motueka fishery.
Keep on eating your nasty sausages made of rectum sinew and you keep these nasty ruthless corporates in business. Good luck with improving the lot of the workers in these industries when the entire fiasco is based on violence and murder and pollution of the planet.