Oil-rig workers settle deal

Onshore oil-rig workers have voted to accept a deal hammered out last night, saying it addresses all their claims.

Some 100 workers at exploration sites in Taranaki and Taupo walked off the job on Friday over the failure to settle their multi-employer collective agreement in three months of negotiating.

On Sunday, the Employment Court ordered them to return to work pending a full injunction hearing tomorrow, but talks last night came up with a deal that workers today voted unanimously to accept.

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little said that workers had won a pay rise of five per cent for 18 months, backdated to September 1, and a substantial allowance for working with new hazardous substances like synthetic mud.

Other wins included a 10 per cent increase in the level of redundancy compensation, an agreement that workers would be paid 12 hours’ pay if they were required to attend training in their weeks off the rig, and the provision of hot meals for all workers.

“For the first time in 20 years, waged workers will get hot meals at work,” he said.

“Historically, hot meals were available for salaried workers only. This is a real win for the waged workers.”

© Scoop Media

EPMU - Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union

Proudly representing New Zealand workers

The EPMU is a democratic union representing over thirty thousand members in ten industries across New Zealand.
By standing together in a union workers get higher wages and better conditions.
As the country's biggest private sector union the EPMU can provide members with workplace representation, legal advice, a freephone support centre, work rights education and broad representation through the EPMU's campaigning and research work.
We campaign for fairness at work and a strong economy based on skilled jobs and investment in manufacturing.

CONTACT EPMU - ENGINEERING PRINTING AND MANUFACTURING UNION

• Website - www.epmu.org.nz/
• Media Contact - Stephanie Rodgers
• Twitter - @EPMU

• Link to - Media Releases
• Facebook

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>