Pan Pac workers return after strike

Workers at Pan Pac are back on the job after striking for the first time in more than 30 years. Photo / Paul Taylor

Pan Pac pulp and timber mills are back in action and unions and management are expected to resume collective agreement negotiations this week following a 24-hour strike last week.

First Union Hawke's Bay organiser Mike McNab said workers rejected the company's "miserly offer" to renew a collective agreement and went on strike from 6pm on Thursday.

Some members stayed until 9pm to safely shut down both the timber and pulp mills.

Of the 380 staff at the site, 230 are union members with First Union accounting for about two-thirds and E Tu the balance.

E Tu members returned to work early after a technical aspect of their strike notice made it void.

"It is not something we are making a particular issue with - our core concern is they saw fit to withdraw their labour," Pan Pac managing director Doug Ducker said. "We haven't had that in over 30-odd years."

He said the impact of the strike was significant, with downtime including a lengthy meeting before the strike vote.

Notice was to be served to forest contracting groups to also take downtime "because we just can't expose wood on to the site without consuming it".

Mr McNab said the company had a moral obligation to lift workers' pay following earlier sacrifices. "When the company was struggling to turn a profit our members agreed to forgo a pay rise and many of their hard-won benefits," he said.

"Now the company is back in healthy profit, they're refusing to acknowledge how hard our members worked to bring the company back in black."

He said in the last financial year the company made a gross profit of $34 million.

Mr Ducker said three years ago "the total company function" was running at a loss. The situation was shared with staff and contractors and compromises were made.

"In the case with the employees that was a fully negotiated and sanctioned agreement, and there was no commitment at all on the grounds of any recovery from that being shared, any more than we felt appropriate at the time."

A driver for lost profitability was that "very beneficial conditions that had developed over the 40-odd years that Pan Pac had been in place" including "excessive" leave and superannuation entitlements.

"Those old conditions were unsustainable and to reintroduce them it is not appropriate," said Mr Ducker.

"We did, in the negotiation process, offer up a consideration to reflect improved performance of the last year in the form of a bonus payment and that was rejected by the negotiating team, almost at the outset.

"We therefore incorporated considerations of recovery and to the wage offer we put in front of them, with a key element also being a three-year term associated with that offer."