The 50 workers at the plant are seeking a 4 percent wage increase and a one-year contract. The company is offering 3 percent and a two-year contract. The union is also resisting the company's attempts to change shift patterns on the melamine line, a laminating process, which would result in cuts in workers' income of between NZ$10,000 and NZ$15,000 a year (NZ$1 = US 45 cents).

Workers from factories in the area and other supporters have been dropping off money, food, firewood, and other supplies to the 24-hour picket line. The union has bought bulk supplies of vegetables from sympathetic farmers at low cost. National Distribution Union (NDU) Strike Alert No: 2 reports that workers at JNL Kaitaia, Bluebird, Cerebos, Fletcher Steel, and Whakatane Board Mills are among those "who have set up a weekly levy to help these workers."

Three unionists have been arrested by the police who escort staff through the picket lines with up to six carloads of cops and a helicopter. On one occasion several workers were injured when they were sideswiped by a truck's trailer. The police charged the driver with careless driving.

NDU president Bill Andersen and another union official were also arrested and charged with trespass when they attempted to enter the plant. Andersen insisted they were acting in compliance with the Employment Relations Act, recently passed by the government, which supposedly allows union representatives to "monitor" the use of nonunion labor during a dispute. The company has been trying to resume limited production using management staff to operate machinery.

Joe Filipio, a 25-year-old worker on the door line and a picket line regular, told the Militant that the experience of the strike has changed his understanding of unions. "I was one of the three that first voted against the strike," he said. "But getting to know people on the picket line, and seeing union members from other factories come by to support us, I see that unions are about standing together." Filipio added that it was fun being on picket duty, "but sometimes it's like a war."

Terry Coggan is a member of the National Distribution Union in Auckland.  
 
 
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