Auckland, New Zealand, 25 February 2019 – Fuji Xerox New Zealand has today expressed disappointment at the decision taken by a union representing 45 of its engineering staff to go on strike during the middle of ongoing collective agreement negotiations.

Last Friday at 4.30pm (22 February) the company received an email from the union confirming strike action would commence from 7:30am today (25 February).

Danielle Everett, General Manager of Human Resources & Legal says: “Our latest offer is an increase in base salary by 2% effective 1 July 2019, and we have also confirmed that performance bonuses for our customer service engineers and technical specialists will be increased by up to 60%, which will be received if the engineers meet their performance targets.

“This represents an approximate 3.1% increase to overall salary, not taking the superannuation impact benefit into consideration.”

“In the wider context of the company’s financial situation where a number of our workforce have had to be made redundant and more than $370 million of losses written off over the last two years, we are doing everything we reasonably can to recognise the value of our people here.”

“We remain hopeful that the union representing our engineers will understand this and return to the table to continue talks in an open, constructive and good faith manner,” Ms Everett says.

“We have a large enough proportion of engineering staff that are not involved in the strike action who have stepped up to ensure there will be no impact to our customers today,” Everett adds.

Union members make up approximately one third of Fuji Xerox NZ’s engineering workforce.

Fuji Xerox NZ remains unclear of the union’s current negotiation position in regards to all claims that were made, and is awaiting a full and formal response following substantial correspondence sent to them in December 2018 regarding the matter.

The company is also unable to agree to the union’s claim of no pass on – an important principle of Fuji Xerox NZ’s is that everyone is treated as one team, regardless of whether they are union members or not.

ENDS

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