Silver Fern defends stance

Silver Fern Farms chief executive Keith Cooper. Photo / Supplied

Silver Fern Farms management are sticking by their handling of staff who stopped work to pay tribute to the Pike River miners.

Staff at their Te Aroha plant stopped work to observe the two minutes' silence to mark the start of the memorial service for the 29 miners in Greymouth at 2pm on December 2.

The silence was requested by Prime Minister John Key and observed by thousands of New Zealand workers.

As a result, two cattle per staff member were not processed during the two minutes and the number was taken off their daily tally.

The company offered staff the opportunity to process the missed animals at the end of the shift, but the New Zealand Meat Workers Union declined on their behalf.

The company said this week that no staff member had their pay "cut" or "docked".

They said Te Aroha staff are paid on a piece-rate basis calculated on throughput and that the animals that would have been processed during the two-minute stoppage were simply processed later.

"Efforts were made by the management team at Te Aroha to ensure that the stoppage was managed as fairly and as inclusively as possible," Silver Fern Farms chief executive Keith Cooper said.

However, they did not deny that those who stopped work to observe the silence were not paid for the two-minutes lost.

In an email to staff last Friday, Mr Cooper said the NZMWU declined to process the missed animals "as a gesture of solidarity" with the company and "in the spirit of comradeship with the West Coast workers".

"Please note there was no conscious decision made to not pay workers for the two-minute period," he said.

"Our workers are paid on daily tallies as agreed with the union based on formulas that are automatically generated by our administration system."

Four days after the memorial three-quarters of the Te Aroha plant was destroyed by fire after sparks from a contractor's saw smouldered in a wall panel.

The fire left more than 300 people out of work.

Mr Cooper said following the fire the company had done "everything" possible to support their Te Aroha staff.

This included "paying the team up until Christmas - two weeks pay, when we are not obligated and never have in the past - establishing our own internal Christmas fund that staff have made voluntary contributions to, providing jobs at other local plants wherever possible and paying accommodation supplements to assist staff who have relocated," he said.