By MARTIN JOHNSTON
Half of the country's customs officers plan to strike for three hours after rejecting a pay offer they consider inadequate.
The 419 Customs Service staff will strike from 11am to 2pm on July 17, as part of a long-running pay row.
They are members of the Customs Officers Association, one
of three unions to represent the service's staff.
The Customs Service was today unable to say if the ports and international airports where the officers work would be affected by the strike.
"We're looking at the implications for our operations," said the service's communications manager, Janice Rodenburg.
In a complex offer involving all three unions, the service had proposed to increase the base pay rates of more than 75 per cent of staff by at least 4 per cent.
But there would also be cuts to allowances and overtime.
"The Customs Service has guaranteed that no-one would get less take-home pay," she said.
Ahead of the strike, the service was trying to arrange talks with the unions involving a mediator.
The association's chairwoman, Kirsten McKenzie, said 70 per cent of its members had voted against the offer.
Members of the other unions -- the Public Service Association and the National Union of Public Employees
-- had also rejected it.
Mrs McKenzie said her union wanted average increases of 23 per cent, to bring customs officers' pay up to the public service median, she said.
"We haven't had a genuine pay increase since 1991. We had a cost neutral increase of 4 per cent in 1995, where we traded off a whole raft of conditions."
She said the average annual salary of fulltime customs officers was $37,500.
Frontline officers, who processed people arriving in and departing from the country, were among the worst paid, receiving $12 to $12.50 an hour -- "less than the baggage handlers and cleaners employed at Auckland International Airport".
But Customs Service said these staff would get an increase of more than 30 per cent to an hourly rate of $16.63.
The airport declined to comment on the strike, but a spokesman noted that 11am to 2pm was a reasonably busy time there
