KEY POINTS:
A Bay of Plenty freezing worker dismissed for holding a half-hour union stopwork meeting has been ordered to be reinstated by the Employment Relations Authority.
The authority found Roderick Reid, who was also a union official at the Rangiruru Affco plant, near Te Puke, was unjustifiably dismissed.
Authority member Yvonne Oldfield ordered his immediate reinstatement, with reimbursement of four weeks' lost earnings.
She also awarded Mr Reid $2500 compensation for hurt and humiliation following his dismissal.
Mr Reid, the branch secretary of the Meat Workers and Related Trades Union, called a delegates' meeting on August 7, delaying processing bobby calves by half an hour until 6.30am.
Following an inquiry into the incident by plant manager Kerry McCree, Mr Reid was dismissed for "serious misconduct" for refusing to start work.
Ms Oldfield found the action was taken because Mr Reid held a "genuine belief" that unrest on the Rangiruru site had reached a point where at least some members had decided industrial action was appropriate.
Although Mr Reid's employer, Affco, did not believe he was acting for the union, Ms Oldfield said the authority found he was "a duly elected branch official who spoke and acted as the agent of the branch".
She said she was satisfied there was no serious misconduct by Mr Reid, who was trying to manage what he saw as a crisis situation.
"This dismissal was harsh in all the circumstances. I conclude that Mr Reid's dismissal was not substantively justified," Ms Oldfield's report said.
- NZPA
