CHEP Pallet Suppliers To Strike After Months Negotiating Fair Wage Increases

WHAT:

Workers at CHEP, Aotearoa’s main supplier of pallets, are taking strike action and will picket outside the company’s service centre as wage increases are denied

WHEN:

Tuesday 8 February, 07:00-08:00

WHERE:

Outside CHEP’s Service Centre, 21-24 O’Rourke Road, Penrose, Auckland

WHY:

"CHEP are the country’s most well-known and largest suppliers of pallets for commercial use - pretty much every distribution centre in New Zealand will have a CHEP pallet somewhere onsite - but their workers have never been fairly paid for the gruelling jobs that they do," said Mark Muller, FIRST Union Secretary for Transport, Logistics and Manufacturing.

"Our original wage claims involve the company meeting significant rises in the cost of living, but after initiating bargaining as far back as June 2021, we’ve made little to no progress with the owners on negotiating fair wage rises."

"Workers say they’ve been pressured into overtime and working weekends, and they are losing quality of life and increasingly out of pocket in an expensive city where rents and prices are rising much faster than their rates of pay."

"Bargaining has been a hard slog and the company is devaluing their own people and their contribution to big profits in the process - workers see no option left but to strike."

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