Hundreds of union activists and delegates will be stopping work today in Auckland to organise against youth rates and to build union power, says the National Distribution Union.

The NDU members will be meeting at Alexandra Park, 11am, Rutherford Room, Alexandra Park Raceway, Greenlane West Rd, Epsom.

The Auckland leg of nationwide stopwork meetings comes almost a year since the start of the prolonged and vicious Progressive Lockout which began on August the 28th 2006.

NDU National Secretary Laila Harré says that the union is fighting as hard for equal pay for equal work for youth as it fought for equal pay across the three Progressive DC’s during the lockout.

“Today’s stopwork meeting is a prelude to this Saturday’s protest and rally against Youth Rates at Britomart, 12 noon,” she says. “Aged based discrimination doesn’t just affect youth workers, it pulls down the wages of adult workers too.”

Young workers from Rainbows End, who recently a won pay rise of $1.80 taking their youth rate to 90% of the adult rate up from the Governments 80% rate, will be addressing the adult union members today.

NDU ended youth rates at Postie Plus last year.

Media are welcome to the first 20 minutes of the meeting.

Further stopwork meetings will be held around the country until the end of the month.

ENDS

Contact:

Rainbows End workers and union delegates activists will be available for interview through NDU Media Liaison Simon Oosterman on 021 922 551
NDU National Secretary Laila Harré on 021 839 661