Company has offered pay rise to striking workers

Wellington meat works company Taylor Preston says it has offered a 10 per cent pay rise to staff who are striking this week.

Nearly 200 union workers are picketing outside the company plant at Ngauranga, Wellington this morning.

The workers say they are paid 20 to 50 per cent less than workers at other plants throughout the country.

The New Zealand Meat Workers Union said working conditions at Taylor Preston were poor, with staff even providing their own teabags.

But Taylor Preston chief executive Andrew Taylor said the company had already made a reasonable offer.

"We have actually offered 10 per cent. It seems to be more about conditions, about things like an office for the union president, that sort of thing," he told National Radio this morning.

Mr Taylor said the union had not asked for teabags to be provided and were releasing incorrect information.

Union organiser Roger Middlemass said the workers at Taylor Preston had been pushed too far.

"They have run out of patience and goodwill after getting knocked back again and again on requests for higher pay and better working conditions," he said.

Mr Middlemass said some workers at the plant were paid only $9.50 an hour, the lowest adult rate which could be paid legally.

He called for the public to support the workers by not buying meat at the A E Preston butchers in Wellington, Porirua and Palmerston North which are supplied by the plant.

The strike is expected to run until Thursday.

The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) are backing the workers action.

CTU president Ross Wilson said Taylor Preston was a company with a reputation for being anti-union and mean and their record over the past decade is an indictment of their millionaire owners."

Mr Wilson said CTU unions and the 350,000 other union members they represent are right behind the Taylor Preston workers.

- NZPA