Neither police nor a coroner had yesterday released the name of the man, the latest of about 60 killed in workplace tragedies in New Zealand since the start of last year, of which about a third have been in the agricultural sector.
The death was among those being mourned at yesterday's late morning Workers' Memorial Day commemoration, on the Marine Parade reserve near the Napier Seafarers' Centre, a short distance from the Port of Napier.
Napier MP and Minister of Police, Fisheries, Revenue and Small Business Stuart Nash was among the speakers, as was new Napier Port chief executive Todd Dawson, at a gathering of about 100 people including workmates and families of people killed or badly injured in the workplace.
Concerned by the numbers of deaths and injuries in the workplace, the Labour-led coalition Government has ordered a workplace safety and health review, just four years after the previous National-led Government ordered a similar review, which led to the Health and Safety at Work Act which came into effect in 2016.
Worker representatives said that the increase in worker deaths dated right back to the National Government's Employment Contracts Act in 1991, and condemned the act as having removed workers' rights to a safe workplace, amid employer quest for greater profit.
Mr Nash said a discussion document and the review "talks about" worker influence of health and safety policy in the workplace, and that the point had been made that workers needed to have control.
"We still have people going to work, and not coming home," he said. "It's totally unacceptable."
He said that if greater worker control was to be implemented then "we've got to have that control across the country".
International Workers' Memorial Day originated in the US in 1970 and is on April 28 each year, although often marked by events on other days.