Written By:
notices and features - Date published:
3:00 pm, May 11th, 2016 - 14 comments
Categories: Unions -
Tags: talleys, Together
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions has just launched its new digital campaigning site – Together
And their first campaign has been emailed out by Bertie Ratu – meatworker and a union member.
My name’s Bertie Ratu – and if my employer Talley’s had their way, I wouldn’t be able to send you this email. They’re taking legal action to gag me and my workmates. They want to stop us from talking about why we want a fair deal.
And that’s not all – they’ve unlawfully stopped us coming to work, suspended us for wearing union t-shirts, and too many of our mates are getting seriously injured at work.
Sir Peter Talley runs his company hands-on. He’s refused to listen to us, but he’ll listen to the people in his community, who buy his products. It was his work in business and the community that got him his knighthood, after all.
Talley’s have done very well out of us. When he got knighted, Sir Peter himself said “we’ve been fortunate to work with some really passionate people in some exciting industries and have some fun and success along the way.” We think he should recognise the people who helped with that success and negotiate with them decently.
Please tell him to do the right thing.
Thank you,
Bertie Ratu
Meat worker and MWU member
https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.jsKatherine Mansfield left New Zealand when she was 19 years old and died at the age of 34.In her short life she became our most famous short story writer, acquiring an international reputation for her stories, poetry, letters, journals and reviews. Biographies on Mansfield have been translated into 51 ...
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good on the CTU for this initiative, community organising is where it is at for unions now along with traditional bargaining and workplace organisation as full time work disappears for so many
unite all the precariat, freelancers, self employed and SME workers that can be united!
I look forward to a full consumer boycott of Talleys to bring them to account once and for all
Go the CTU
It was with great pleasure that I took the last bag of McCain’s Baby peas
from the freezer at my supermarket on Monday and then went and told the management that all they had left were Talley’s and that I refuse to buy that brand because of the way they treat their workers. I will keep checking and commenting.
That’ll show them. You assume that McCains’ treatment of their workers is better than Talley’s? Having worked for both as a harvester driver during university, I can assure you that ain’t the case.
One at a time Sam, one at a time.
Well, it is a fair point Kevin. I’d be shelling my own peas if I were John.
Is there a way to donate on the website?
Not sure why but after signing I can’t link to fb to share post
Signed and passed on to others to sign. Not using FB though b waghorn.
I didn’t realise McCain’s were Talley’s – could anybody please provide a full list of Talley’s products? I am planning to send notices around my childrens’ school encouraging a boycott.
McCain are not connected to Talley’s (as far as I can tell). However, McCain is a big multinational corporate, so possibly not much preferable.
http://www.mccain.com/ if you’re interested.
I’ve boycotted Talleys for as long as I can remember due to their appalling work rights abuses but I also don’t purchase McCains as they had issues with on site health and safety failures for workers but also food hygiene issues, while ago, about 7 years ago from memory.
Toxic weeds seeds in the frozen peas, parts of a mouse in another product and some other things I can’t recall. It was quite a feature on Campbell Live back in the day.
I always buy watties frozen peas and corn but then I don’t know their track record……….
Toxic seeds in the peas was Talley’s, not McCain’s. http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/50539/talley039s-faces-grilling-over-poison-berry-claim
I haven’t knowingly bought Talley’s anything in a long time – their disgraceful attitude towards customers and their own staff a large part of that. I’d sooner deal with reputable foreigners (Watties is owned by Heinz) than crooked, abusive and corrupt locals.
Oh well, there you go :-).
Annoyingly we have to rely on overseas companies for large scale food production as Talleys, being one of the few local producers of frozen vege shouldn’t really be in business. (I’m vego so don’t have to worry about consuming Talleys meat)
Also, my vogels bread is Korean these days. Goodman Feilder Wattie were sold some time last year I think.
Reminds me of that capitalist rat, Lord Vesty, his ‘Works’
employed the same behaviour. Smash Capitalism.