Workers on strike at Wellington freezing works

More Power to the workers who are striking.
I hope that if Taylor Preston does not come to the table with a offer that is acceptable to the workers, that the CTU fully get in behind the workers and set up a strike fund and actively support them untill they can force the Taylor Preston management back to the table.

Vegan Communist??

How could anyone that claims to be vegan support workers that cause terror too and mutilate animals.

Fuck meat workers rights, what about the animals rights!

Any vegan that supports meat workers getting paid more to do their dirty work need to get serious help.

How bout instead encouraging these workers to get humane jobs. Without workers the slaughterhouses couldn't operate. Vegans should be looking at how to close these places of hell down not improve the conditions of those that murder hundreds of thousands sentient creatures every damn year!

Hey positively vegan. You are barking up the wrong tree. and barking mad if you can't feel compassion for people on the poverty line in aotearoa.
Do you have any idea what poverty is like for a family liveing in Jonsonvile or porirua.
I am a vegan. I whent to the picket and talked to the meet workers i told them i was a vegetarian.
Most of n.z eats meat.Telling people that they are murderers and that they shyould not have rights is not going to help the animals.Talking to meat eaters and meat workers about compassion and alternitive options might.
Please read anarcha lilliths comment under the "meat sucks but not as much as taylors", post. She has a great annalasys.

apple picking in Ngauranga Gorge? get real!

Yeah right o. So 'vegan' makes one vaguely intelligent point about a false dicotme between meat sucking and taylors beeing worse. I agree neither is worse they are both abhorent to me. It was just an email title that i sent to a friend not the actual intended tittle. Bllahh blaah
do you realise your doing as much if not more to polarie issues than false dichotomies.
Have you forgoten that me and anarcha lillith are both vegans. Why the fuck would we vegan bash. I love vegans.
Im Sorry if i hurt your fealings but your argument is really lame and you are still missing the point that both the animals and the workers are beeing exploited. I am all for shutting the whole meat industy down and the entire animal exploitation industry and the whole explotation industry as well basicaly lets get rid of capitalism. In order to do this we need to get rid of the ruleing class. I am not opposed to violence to do this but i dont want to go round killing everyone who is mean to animals & queers who is rasist sexist agist gender oprresive... or there would not be many of us left and it would be a horrible blood bath.Lets start by talking to meat workers rather that simplty putting them down.
Yeah i agree with spirit of kronstat you ought to watch what you say mind you you are useing an alias.
So have you really been into taylors at Nauranga?

First of all myself and "vegan" are not the same person. I don't think my message was violent in any way. I am so god damn sick of people who claim to be vegan say things like "those lines need to be slowed down, not just for the workers but for the animals welfare too." There is NO animal WELFARE inside SLAUGHTERHOUSES! Those two words do not go together at all.

"wage slaves who happen to work in the animal abuse industry"

HAPPEN to work? They choose to work in the slaughter house there ARE other places they can work. Everyone has the choice of where they work. I don't work in a slaughter house. I don't get paid a particulary great wage either but my employment does not involve harming animals.

"how about you tell us what practical things you are doing to stop slaughterhouse cruelty and/or exploitation of workers."

How about you tell us what you do!!

My comments weren't made with the intent to convince anyone to think positively about animal rights. My comments were made to hopefully make Vegans think about their actions and what they are saying.

I think vegan's image says it all.

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Editorial note: This comment has been modified to remove a name. Only the name has been removed nothing else. Please do not use (what you assume are) peoples real names when they have been using pen names / pseudonyms.

OK, the main reason I have been annoyed by some of the comments here is that when ever there is a dispute between the bosses of a meat company and the workers, some people always direct their abuse and anger towards the workers, and thats just dumb. Yes they are directly responsible for the killing of animals and they are guilty. but the anonymous bosses who have far more decisionmaking power and make huge profits are far more guilty, and they never seem to attract the same amount of anger that is directed towards the workers.

Why has no one posted up pictures of the Meatworks boss with "I hope the scumbag dies" comments under it? Is it because he is a nice looking guy in a suit that never ever has to get blood on his hands? That makes him far worse in my opinion.

Maybe its because a few vegans and vegetarians have posted here saying they support the meatworkers. I dont support them because I dont want anyone to work in a slaughterhouse. There are some industries that are so unethical and cruel that they have to be shut down. But I would rahter direct my anger at the people in that industry who profit from it and who make the decisions, than at the vast majority of people who just work there cos they need a job and certainly arent benefiting from the cruelty.

man these fools are enough to put me off even eating any vegetables.

Victory to the workers and as some guy put before, unionised meat for the starving masses!

Also I can't find a photo of Andrew Taylor. But heres a list of Taylor Preston scumfucks: (directors)

John Benton (Chairman)
Andrew Taylor (Managing Director)
Christopher Grace (Livestock Director)
Rod Preston
Scot Preston

So correct me - workers seemingly being treated unfairly by the meatworks management go on strike for more money and a bunch of mental cripples who eat seaweed and mung beans turns the whole discussion around and starts bitching about meat eaters. The discussion is about fair pay for fair work, not whether a t-bone steak is evil (medium rare, with chips it's actually divine). One of you nongs even asked "How does one communicate with non activist radicals?" Scoff some B multi vitamins, take a deep breath, stop talking shit and just speak plain English to them. They are not from mars, they're people. You have lost touch and become insular.

Who might have been a vegan isn't the point. You ommitted Hitler, by the way. The point is surely that low-paid workers are trying to win a pay rise. Lifestyles such a vegan's are irrelevant to the pay dispute (and life in general).

"You ommitted Hitler, by the way."

actually hitler was not a vegetarian, a common misconception, since he was at various points on health regimes where he was not suppoused to eat meat:

"While it is true that Hitler's doctors put him on a vegetarian diet to cure him of flatulence and a chronic stomach disorder, his biographers such as Albert Speer, Robert Payne, John Toland, and others, have attested to his liking for ham sausages and other cured meats. Even Spencer says that Hitler was a vegetarian from only 1931 on: "It would be true to say that up to 1931, he preferred a vegetarian diet, but on some occasions would deviate from it." He committed suicide in the bunker when he was 56 in 1945; that would have given him 14 years as a vegetarian, but we have the testimony to the contrary of the woman chef who was his personal cook in Hamburg during the late 1930s - Dione Lucas. In her "Gourmet Cooking School Cookbook," she records that his favorite dish - the one that he customarily requested - was stuffed squab (pigeon). "I do not mean to spoil your appetite for stuffed squab, but you might be interested to know that it was a great favorite with Mr. Hitler, who dined in the hotel often."

from: http://www.veg.ca/newsletr/mayjun96/hitler.html

also according to the website the Nazis banned vegetarian organizations in Germany and the lands they invaded and occupied

Hmmm... for a while I was finding this interesting, now it seems to have degenerated to a level below even that of the usual internet debate. Shouting "mental cripples" at each other doesn't do anything for either side. Thanks to Mark R and Smush and a couple of others for their comments.

As for the mudthrowers - why not fuck off elsewhere and leave this site alone. Surely somebody has started a www.pointlessabuse.org somewhere?

There are real issues here and it would be nice if people posting were those who actually considered them worth addressing. If you want a scrap what's wrong with the pub on a Saturday night?

Works for me....

I can understand (if not condone) abuse thrown at meat eaters by vegans (and vice versa), but why are vegans so busy abusing each other? Anyone working for animal rights in a basically capitalistic and exploitative society has a moral dilemma.

Do we try to make small and cumulative improvements, for example increasing workers' salaries so that animal welfare can be improved or do we take a non-compromise stance and insist on nothing more than complete elimination of slaughterhouses (a less euphemistic term than "freezing works" by the way), as well as all animal farming, laboratory experiments, zoos, circuses, horse and greyhound racing, hunting etc., etc.

Both strategies have their strong and weak points, and those advocateing either of those strategies are dedicated people working for the betterment of animals. So by all means lets have some rational debate on which strategy or combination of strategy may work in each given situation, but please let's stop abusing people who are on the same side.

The gas chamber workers in WW2 is actually a good analogy. Many of them were prisoners themselves who were given certain priviledges (ie spared form certain death - this was a "priviledge" in the context of a concentration camp) if they helped the Nazis. Of course they were wrong to do so. Of course if they had more courage they would have refused. But courage is a rarity - most of us are not very brave, and I would not like to judge the concentration camp helpers or the workers and Taylor Preston until I have been in their situation.

The Taylor Preston workers have been written off as "scum". But who are the worst scum, those who work at the slaughterhouses or those who knowingly buy their products? At least, unlike many meat eaters, the workers have sufficient courage of their convictions to actually take a part in the distasteful work that our society's addiction to meat demands. I always tell meat eaters that if they must eat meat, then at least take part in the killing process so they know what it is really like.

Slaughterhouses operate because they make MONEY. The more that low-level employees make, the less profit that leaves for those who started/run slughterhouses. So even if you don't a shit about the workers/death camp operators/etc (I'm not saying you should -- it's irrelevant for the point I'm making), it's probably better that they get extra money (that they're going to spend on additional harmful shit, to be sure) than the owners/investors. The smaller the profit margin of the meat industry, the weaker it becomes/less political clout it has/less institutional incentive to murder more innocent animals etc. I'm not saying it's necessarily worth animal activists' time to go support the strikers, just that all told, it's better the money be kept away from the owners/investors, even if it means putting it into the hands of people perhaps almost as scummy (if not nearly as powerful or in a position to do as great of harm).

"it's probably better that they get extra money (that they're going to spend on additional harmful shit, to be sure) than the owners/investors. The smaller the profit margin of the meat industry, the weaker it becomes ......."

Giving the workers more money is in reality not going to make that bigger difference to the owners/investers. It's not going to have an effect really on the running costs of the slaughterhouses and diffinatley is not going to improve the suffering and deaths of the animals that are killed or close the place down.

Most of us are against the way people are taken advantage of by their employers, but I stop when those seeking more money are involved in unnessary violence towards animals.

I still find it hard to understand why individuals who are against harming animals, still support and/or actively campaign for those who are harm animals to get more money for doing so.

As I said in an earlier post the reason I posted my comments here in the first place was to get vegans who speak out in support of wage increases for animal abusers to stop and think about it.

I'm not saying that vegans should not help these people - but support and encourage them to find other jobs - not help put pressure on the slaughterhous bosses to pay more and so also support the continuation of a violent industry.