The Alliance Party is urging support for striking distribution workers at Progressive Enterprises sites in Auckland, Palmerston
North and Christchurch. The Alliance is donating $500 and asking its members to match that amount.

Alliance Party co-leader Len Richards says the workers have taken a courageous stand and need more support to defeat their employer's anti-union lockout.

"It is a indictment on New Zealand that we permit hard-working, honest people like this to be paid wages that you simply cannot afford to live on in modern day urban New Zealand. These workers are fighting for pay parity and a wage rise within a single employment contract so that one group of employees cannot be played off against another. Unity is strength!"

He says if Progressive Enterprises management redirected the money they spent on dishonest full page advertisements attacking the workers, they could have settled the dispute by now.

Mr Richards says "the money is there."

"This massive company can afford to pay decent wages, but they would rather act like vampires, draining the lifeblood from workers and communities while sucking profits offshore."

He says Progressive is owned by Woolworths Australia, whose CEO Roger Corbett is apparently paid more in a day than a fulltime checkout
operator is paid in a year.

"There's a word for this: exploitation."

Mr Richards says it is up to all unionists, workers and fair minded New Zealanders to get in behind the locked-out workers.

"If the Government remains silent then they are effectively siding with the boss – where is Labour when the people who vote for them
need their help?"

ENDS

For further information contact Alliance Party Co-leader Len Richards
on 09 276 9433 or mobile 027 320 1973

For further information on the campaign, visit the Union campaign
website at www.shelfrespect.org/