Heinz Wattie’s closure plans: Union blasts late notice of proposal

The Heinz Wattie's factory on King St in Hastings. Photo / Paul Taylor

A Hawke’s Bay-based union organiser says he was given less than an hour’s notice about a proposal that could see 50 Hastings workers lose their jobs.

But a Heinz Wattie’s spokesperson said the company consulted with the unions at the earliest possible time.

On Wednesday, Heinz Wattie’s announced proposed changes to operations in New Zealand.

The proposal, if it goes ahead, would result in the closure of manufacturing facilities in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin, and packing would cease at the associated frozen lines in King St, Hastings.

About 350 roles are expected to be impacted because of the proposed site closures and other changes across the business, but the final number won’t be confirmed until consultation and consideration of redeployment opportunities.

E Tū union regional organiser Norm Mouritsen said of the 350 roles potentially on the chopping block, 50 were at the King St facility where Wattie’s started its empire.

A Heinz Wattie’s spokesperson said if the proposal goes ahead, it is confident of redeploying impacted people from King St with its sites in Hawke’s Bay.

Mouritsen said 500 people were employed at King St in peak season, but currently it had 350 fulltime workers.

Just after 11am on Wednesday, Mouritsen claimed he was in a meeting when he got a call from an Australian number.

He said he would usually ignore calls during a meeting, but as the national advocate for Wattie’s, the Australian calling code intrigued him, so he answered.

On the other end was the Heinz Wattie’s general manager for human resources who said the company needed to meet with him at midday.

Mouritsen said he would not show up to any meeting “at any time” without knowing what it’s about.

The manager said they “couldn’t divulge anything”.

Mouritsen said since he was in the middle of a meeting, and wasn’t being told why he had to attend the meeting in less than an hour, he could not be expected to drop everything and turn up.

He said the manager told him the company was meeting with union members at 1pm on Wednesday and they wanted to give him a “heads up” before they called other union organisers around the country.

“It’s not acceptable at all,” Mouritsen said.

“The usual practice of all employers is that we get miles of notice and then if it’s in terms of a restructure, proposed restructure or whatever it is, they give us the embargoed information.”

Mouritsen said if the company really cared about its workers and wanted to support them “you would have expected that we would have had the opportunity to go there, sit with them and support them, to be there with them”.

“It wasn’t good. Shocking really.”

A Heinz Wattie’s spokesperson said the company consulted with the unions at the earliest possible time, “in view of the complexity of the proposed plans”.

“We will be engaging constructively with unions as part of consultation process,” the spokesperson said.

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.