KEY POINTS:
Thirty-two years after joining Avondale manufacturing jewellers JC Hurst and Son, Shirley Hall is asking for a pay rise. Mrs Hall, 64, still earns only $13 an hour, just $1 above the legal minimum of $12.
Last year, after 31 years, she met someone on a bus who gave her the name of a union organiser, and she finally joined a union. She plans to attend her first union rally - part of a national campaign for workers' rights - at the end of this month.
"I've never done anything like this before," Mrs Hall said.
"It's a lack of self-confidence. That's why I've never done anything."
Joe Gallagher, an organiser for the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, said he agreed to help Mrs Hall because he was "horrified" at the way she had been treated. "They always pick on people who don't like to speak out. People exploit that."
The Hall family have been connected with JC Hurst and Son since founder Jack Hurst, now 82, brought Mrs Hall's late husband here from Britain to work for the firm two years after founding it in 1961. Their son Stephen Hall, 37, also works for the firm, as does Mr Hurst's son David. Two of the other three staff are brothers, one of whom has recently become a part-owner of the business.
Mrs Hall started working for the firm part-time when Stephen turned 5 in 1976, took about three years out after having a daughter in 1977, returned part-time initially and has been fulltime for the past 20 years.
She said all the men in the business earned "good money" on piece rates, producing bangles and other jewellery for chains such as Michael Hill and Pascoes. Seventy per cent of their output goes to Australia.
Mrs Hall is employed to clean and polish the jewellery, check for faults, and organise and package orders.
"I'm the only one on a wage," she said. "I think I started off at about $6. Since 1988 I have kept all the records in a notebook and at that time I was on $8.32. At the time I was happy.
"It was not till last Christmas when the wholesaler asked me at our Christmas 'do' what wages I was on. He said he was paying his lady $18 an hour and she had been with him 10 years.
"So that really got me thinking. I've been here 30 years and she's getting more than me after 10 years. That really steamed me up."
Mr Hurst, who runs the firm with his son and the other co-owner, said the three of them would look into Mrs Hall's request for a pay rise and "see if we can come up with something".
But he said the business faced intense competition from cheap Chinese jewellery which had forced other local manufacturers to close.
He had kept Mrs Hall's job going even though "really we can hardly support it. Last year she had three months off to go round Europe. We managed very well without her."
But Mrs Hall said her job was always busy and she was worth more than $13 an hour. "I just feel I've been abused, more than anything. It's taken me too long to go this far. I'm not going to back down."
Nationwide workers' rights rallies will climax at TelstraClear Pacific Stadium in Manukau at 1pm on August 27 and at North Harbour Stadium two days later.
* www.workrights.org.nz
