Hundreds of CHH workers strike

Hundreds of workers at several Carter Holt Harvey (CHH) sites around the country are striking today after failing to get 5 per cent pay offers, unions say.

Pickets were being held outside the CHH head office in Auckland, as well as in Whangarei, Tokoroa and Christchurch.

Strikes and stop-work meetings were being held at in those cities and also in Nelson.

National Distribution Union wood sector secretary Jim Jones said workers from a few more sites were involved today than had taken part in a similar national day of industrial action on August 19.

But many sites remained at work under the terms of current agreements, Mr Jones said.

"Having said that, next week we're looking at in the major centres stopwork meetings of all Carter Holt workers."

The campaign would intensify if necessary.

Negotiations at various sites were at different stages but "they've all pretty much come to the same halt in terms of an inability for us to be able to get, on any of those sites, a reasonable offer on wages, in or around the 5 per cent-plus", he said.

The company had not offered that sort of increase at any of its sites, he said.

"The company's basically saying they can't afford it and it's up to each enterprise to negotiate their own agreement," Mr Jones said.

"Some of their sites genuinely would be doing better than others so some at an enterprise level may well afford it. For them to sustain their argument surely we would see a 5 per cent offer on some sites."

Today's action involves members of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, the National Distribution Union and the Amalgamated Workers' Union.

- NZPA