“Your Livelihood is on the Line” Freezing Workers in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1973–1994

Abstract

Drawing on oral histories, this thesis tells the story of a group of men and women who worked in New Zealand’s freezing works between 1973 and 1994. For much of the twentieth century, freezing workers occupied an important place within the New Zealand economy and a powerful position in the country’s trade union movement. By the 1970s, their strategic location in a key export sector, a broadly supportive industrial relations regime, and a strong workplace and union culture sustained freezing worker militancy. In a ‘blood and guts’ workplace dominated by speed, regimentation, and monotony, workers sustained a strong workplace culture; a culture that emphasised values of camaraderie and whanaungatanga (family-like relationships). This workplace culture reinforced wider community connections and underpinned a strong union culture. Freezing workers frequently challenged the prerogatives of employers and asserted their own control and autonomy on the job. Like workplace culture, union culture extended beyond the workplace, into the community and family lives of workers, especially during industrial action. In exploring workplace and union culture, and in drawing on oral histories, this thesis shows what working in the industry meant to those who did the work and what the union meant to rank-and-file workers beyond its institutional role. At the same time, the meat-freezing industry underwent significant transformations in the 1970s and 1980s, driven by both international and domestic forces. Britain’s entry into the EEC, oil shocks, and a collapse in export prices placed significant pressures on the industry, while the deregulation of the industry and removal of subsidies for farmers spurred on a period of mass closures and redundancies. As the economic prosperity that defined the post-war years came to an end in the 1970s and 1980s, freezing workers sustained, attempted to defend, and then lost much of their power, a decline accelerated by structural changes in the economy in the 1980s and 1990s. Oral histories provide insights into the way workers responded to this period of ‘disempowering change’ in their fight for redundancy pay and the efforts of workers, unions and communities in setting up support networks after a closure. In their responses, freezing workers drew on a strong workplace and union culture.