Time to share the Gold Mine in the Gorge

This was published in the Dominion Post on 7th Feb.

Taylor Preston - One of New Zealand’s most profitable meat plants

We work for Taylor Preston Ltd, whose managing director is Andrew Taylor.

The Taylor family are worth $57 million, according to the National Business Review. They once owned a gold mine in Canada.

Now they own another in the Ngauranga Gorge, Wellington.

At Taylor Preston we work for some of the lowest wages and under some of the worst conditions of employment in the New Zealand meat industry.

For nine long years from 1991 until 2000 our wages and conditions stayed the same.

In 1995, the Evening Post reported that when we tried to join the Union management called us to meetings and threatened, "if the Union comes in we’ll close the plant forever." (This is denied by Andrew Taylor).

Many of us were scared by that and scared when the company called the police to stop the Union organisers talking to us.

Even MPs Steve Maharey and Jim Anderton were refused entry when they tried to visit to us.

But in 1999 we began to hold meetings in a church hall in Porirua where the company couldn’t threaten us or take our names.

Andrew Taylor once said "we don’t have a problem with unions. We just don’t have them" (Source Evening Post 1995)

Well, now we do. And we are on strike after voting by secret ballot 297 to 16 to go out.

Enough is enough!

• Other meat companies pay their workers from 20% to over 50% more than Taylor Preston. Most of us get less than $15 per hour.