pictures from the picket line

Auckland's Burning has some great pictures (more in other posts too) from the picket line of Progressive Enterprises distribution workers lock out.

company blames underpaid workforce for large profit

The sight today at the local Foodtown was one of hundreds of white tickets peppering the aisles reading,

We're sorry your favourite product is out of stock.

Why? According to the full page ad taken by Progressive Enterprises Ltd in today's Herald,

PEL is suspending grocery distribution centre operations indefinitely to ensure the continued supply of grocery products to customers of Foodtown, Woolworths and Countdown supermarkets ... Industrial action at our distribution center's prevents us from supplying our stores with grocery goods via these center's.

Progressive claims that the Union demand for a single agreement for the distribution centre (DC) workers across the Christchurch, Palmerston North and Auckland DC's and an 8% pay rise will bring the multi-billion company to its knees. 500 employees want to be paid the same rate for the same job. 500 out of 18000 NZ employees will make or break this country's food supply.

Progressive's PR offensive continues to say

PEL is seeking urgent mediation to find a fast resolution and to ensure the union demands for less than three per cent of our staff don't threaten the job security of our entire18,000-plus workforce. We are always prepared to negotiate but not until striking staff return to work.

Which is a bit disingenuous. Urgent mediation and negotiation are usually things that happen immediately before strike action is called, not after. Certainly not after suspending staff for taking industrial action, locking out staff, demanding they return to work without changes to their employment conditions.

The union, the National Distribution Workers Union, responded to the newspaper ad with the following:

Progressive rehired the redundant workers on the lower pay (up to $3 less) and conditions (i.e. ending almost all allowances) of the Progressive Shands Rd Supply Chain and ended the Woolworths National Collective Agreement. Workers at Palmerston North retained the pay and allowances of the original national agreement as the company could not find another location for a new distribution centre and therefore could not legally rehire workers on lower
rates.

All this amongst a fantastic corporate (PDF) result for both PEL and its Australian owner Woolworths Australia Limited. The New Zealand operations reported $2.93 billion sales, reported EBIT of $122 million, sales increase of 3.5% in Q3 and 3.8% in Q4. Food inflation was significantly less at 1.5-2%.

The striking workers aren't getting paid at the moment. Donations can be made to the National Distribution Union at the BNZ account 02-0200-0217968-00 with the reference "Lock Out" to give them a hand.

Kiwi Herald also reports on the issue.

out of food

Foodtown Mt Eden had quite bare shelves when I popped in yesterday evening. My immediate thoughts were of slack management, or a high number of sickies. Unfortunately I was wrong.

Progressive Enterprises, the people who bring grocery items to half the country through the Foodtown, Countdown and Woolworth's brands, have locked out their striking distribution workers . Mt Eden store is particularly noticeable, because of it's small storeroom, it requires multiple deliveries of dry goods every day. Other supermarket's will be feeling the pinch soon, as groceries continue to sell and DC's fail to keep up with demand with their union workforce unable to return to work.

The dispute itself is over national pay rates - the union contesting that workers throughout the country should be paid the same for the same job. Prog's, presumably, pays their non-Auckland workers less, because the market pay is less. Working in Auckland is more expensive for two reasons:
- Cost of travel, further to go in most cases.
- Progressive Enterprises prices by region, essentially making Central Auckland the most expensive place to buy groceries in the country.

But that doesn't mean that Palmerston North worker's don't have to travel or buy food.

[Update: I presumed wrong, see next post]

Whatever the result, in the meantime, expect empty supermarket shelves and a PR disaster for Progs.

well, well

More on NZfact spying on kiwis, apparently turning out that their advanced peice of software is none other than a staffer poking around on P2P netowrks, participating in sharing in order to nab IP addresses off traders. Which of course is just as illegal as sharing pirate material for any other reason, most likely entrapment and possibly a breach of the privacy act (if an IP address can be considered personal data, which I do)

[Hat tip: Juha]

slack

So, yes. I've been completely slack with the whole blog thing. Blame Christmas for being just round the corner. No, really - the only break from thinking about it is a few days in September.

The Weekend Herald report on Hollywood Studio's spying on internet traffic to catch P2P users downloading their content is a worry.

The software, developed to hunt movie pirates, can track internet searches in what an international privacy watchdog says is an alarming intrusion. It can trace Google searches and other download attempts back to the computer they came from.

I have two problems with what the Motion Picture Producer's Association of America, via their representative NZfact, is doing. Firstly the concerns over piracy are mind boggling. Juha rightly pointed out that,

...it's hard to see how NZ FACT can obtain the above data without accessing computer systems somehow, or sniffing ISP customers' network traffic. If this is what's happening, is it really legal for NZ FACT and its employees to do so?

I can't actually fathom how this software works without actually being spyware on the systems of search engines or search users, or without cooperation from the likes of Google (very unlikely), or Pirate Bay (yeah, right). But if the software works like it is claimed to, we should be very worried. I'm sure the MPAA will have requests to adapt the software for some very disturbing uses, from the concerning (market research), to the dirty (blackmailing), and worse (electioneering, Church recruitment, identification of gays to hunt down and stone).

My second problem is Hollywood treating the Internet as the problem. Sure people are downloading movies and television programs like there's no tomorrow. Catching the likes of John Mansfield Houston is one thing, but the so called pirates who use P2P are the same people who go to movies and watch network television.

People who see content at the cinema, on television, newspapers, radio and the internet don't care about the revenue of the producers. They really just don't. All they care about is the content. All they gotta do is make it pay, either by pay-per-download, or putting commercials in. Or both. While most users would make the effort to fast forward a 3 minute commercial slot, it wouldn't be worth the effort to fast thru a 5 second iTVC sold to Coke for $10 million. In fact, I'd bet that having free downloads for movies & TV episodes with no more than 30 seconds of commercials per commercial half hour (22 mins or so) would drive people to the movies and get them buying DVDs for the commercial free versions.

So grow up Hollywood.