producers, processors and unions: the meat producers board and labour relations in the new zealand...

PRODUCERS, PROCESSORS AND UNIONS: THEMEATPRODUCERS BOARD AND LABOUR RELATIONS INTHE NEW ZEALANDMEAT INDUSTRY, 1952^1971

By Bruce Curtis and James ReveleyUniversity of Auckland and University ofWollongong

In New Zealand, the historical trend towards the rational-capitalistictransformation of agriculture was forestalled in part by producerboards, institutions that were intended to operate in the collectiveinterests of farmers. Recently, there has been renewed interest bothin the economic effects of the boards and in the role of farmersthemselveswithinNewZealand's unique arbitral systemof industrialrelations. This paper bridges these areas of research by examining theinfluence of the Meat Producers Board on management^labourrelations within the export meat industry. Whereas the Board isgenerally regarded as having empowered family-labour farmers, weargue that its interventions also empowered meatworkers andsimultaneously weakened meat-processing companies as employers.The power resources indirectly supplied tomeatworkers by the Boardwere an important external source of union power in the industry. Byexamining these resources, we identify the neglected effects of a keyinstitution that shaped New Zealand's path of development bypreventing the subsumption of `independent' farming.

INTRODUCTION

Agricultural production in the twentieth century has been characterized bytensions between family-labour farming and its rational-capitalistic counter-part. A significant debate has resulted which seeks to explain the persistence of`household-based independent farmers' in the face of modernizing forces.1 Farfrom being subsumed by the process of rationalization, in `settler societies'

Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 41, No. 2 July 2001ISSN 0004-8992

ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand 2001.Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UKand 350Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 135

Wewould like to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier version ofthis paper. We are grateful to Jeff Palmer of the Macmillan Brown Library, University ofCanterbury, for allowing us access to unsorted material in the New Zealand Meatworkers UnionArchives.

1 Font, Export agriculture, p. 331. For a review, see Mann, Agrarian capitalism, chs 1 and 2.

family-labour farmers have not only persisted, but have achieved a level ofeconomic significance and political influence that has intrigued and puzzledsocial scientists and historians. New Zealand is a case in point. There the trendtowards the subsumption of family-labour farming was forestalled as theprocesses of state formation and political mobilization generated a differenthistorical trajectory from the one experienced by countries, such as Argentina,where agriculture came to be dominated by a rentier class.2

In the early decades of this century, family-labour farming constituted themain form of production within New Zealand agriculture, engaging morethan 50 per cent of all farmers.3 Given New Zealand's long tradition ofgovernment intervention, producer boards, legally constituted bodies thatwere intended to operate in the collective interests of farmers, have beenidentified as a key institution that sustained and empowered family-labourfarmers.4 Recently, there has been renewed interest in both the economiceffects of these boards, and the role of farmers themselves within NewZealand's unique arbitral system of industrial relations.5 Whereas the studiesof producer boards do not address the influence of these institutions on theemployment relationship, the labour historical studies of farmers andindustrial relations fail to locate the employment relationship within thebroader institutional context established by the boards. This article bridgesthese areas of research by examining the influence of the Meat ProducersBoard on management^labour relations in the meat export industry.6 Bybringing the employment relationship into view, it contributes to the broaderdebate about the economic, political and social consequences of the survival ofindependent farming.7

The period considered is at the end of Economic Stabilization, aprogramme that operated from 1942 until 1950, under which the pricesfarmers received for meat were to be held constant at the level obtained on

2 Font, Export agriculture.3 Brooking, Economic transformation, p. 229.4 See Moran et al., Empowering family farms.5 Regarding the boards, see Fleming, Agricultural support policies; on farmers and industrial

relations, see Mabbett, Trade, employment and welfare. Mabbett revives an earlier debateamongst labour historians, which included the following key contributions: Martin, Ruraland industrial labour; Martin, The removal of compulsory arbitration; Walsh and Fougere,The unintended consequences; and Holt, Compulsory arbitration.

6 The meat export industry is located within the agricultural sector, which `includes farming,the farm input industries, and the processing, distribution, and marketing industries centredround farm production'. The meat industry can be subdivided into the stages of production(rearing animals), processing (dismembering animals) and export of meat. Theirconcatenation constitutes the `export chain'. Bremer and Brooking, Federated farmers, p.126, n. 1.

7 Key contributions to this debate include Font's argument that in settler societiesindependent farming contributed to the conditions for industrialization. Font, Exportagriculture.

136 Bruce Curtis and James Reveley

ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand 2001

15 December 1942.8 The official war historian J. V. T. Baker notes that acrucial concern was `to keep an acceptable relationship between wages andfarm incomes'.9 However, officials of the meatworkers' unions were of theopinion that parity had not been maintained, as indicated by this statementfrom a union document:

Instead of taking part in the prosperity of the farming industries, thestabilization agreement made it possible for freezing workers to be worseoff than the rest of the wage-earning community.10

This article shows how, in the propitious economic conditions of the 1950s and1960s, the meatworkers' unions capitalized on the power resources suppliedby the Meat Producers Board, which resulted in considerable strike activityand upward wage drift relative to the rest of the manufacturing sector.11 Tobe sure, this was a period that was favourable to unions generally, witheconomic prosperity and buoyant labour market conditions. But there is goodreason to question `the commonplace notion that union power is an inversefunction of unemployment', because industry level institutional structuresmediate broader economic trends in shaping the influence of unions inparticular industries.12 It is our contention that the meatworkers' unions werestronger, and the employers were weaker, than they would have been if theBoard had not licensed meat companies.

The Meat Producers Board will be described, following North, as aninstitution in the sense that it established the `rules of the game',which over timewere to `govern the behaviour of firms, unions and other organizations' withinthe meat industry.13 The key aspect of the producer-based form of governancethat will be examined is industrial licensing, the main `institutionalarrangement' by which the Board controlled the entry and exit of firms in theindustry.14 Through licensing, the Board deliberately supported an array ofcompeting firms, which benefited farmers. The consequent heightened

8 Any increase in the export schedule prices was credited to the Meat Industry StabilizationAccount, with subsidies needed to keep down production costs, in turn, being paid from theAccount. The Stabilization Account complemented the Meat Pool Account that had beenintroduced in 1941. In practice, price increases were shared between the two accounts. SeeBaker,The NewZealand people at war, pp. 328^30.

9 Ibid., p. 324.10 Macmillan Brown Library, University of Canterbury (hereafter MBL), MB33/17a Disputes

to 1972, Meatworkers Union Document, n.d. (but probably late 1940s), Stabilization andthe Case for Higher Wages in the Freezing Industry, p. 10.

11 The view of the labour market adopted is that of an `organised system of conflict', wherein thepower of the key actors on each side of the market is determined by the resources that theypossess. Resources thus include not just capital, raw materials, labour and such like, but alsocapabilities that enable their holders to extract gains from the other side by threatening todisrupt normal organizational functioning. Fligstein and Fernandez, Worker power, p. 23.

12 Kelly, Rethinking industrial relations, p. 27.13 Gahan and Harcourt, Labour markets, p. 524.14 Davis and North, Institutional change, p. 7.

TheMeat Producers Board and Labour Relations in New Zealand, 1952^1971 137


competition for stock, in turn, led to difficulty on the part of these firms inachieving unity in dealing with organized labour. Thus the price of ongoingintervention by the Board to keep open a range of options for farmers to disposeof their stockwas the empowerment of the unions that representedmeatworkers^ a group to which farmers, by-and-large, were bitterly opposed. However, tothe extent that labour costs were a relatively small proportion of the total costinvolved in processing meat and transporting it to overseas markets, it was aprice that farmers were willing to pay. The decline of this pattern began in1971, when the Meat Industry Employers Association was formed, precisely`to achieve a greater uniformity of purpose and action by member companies',in their dealings with the unions.15 This measure coincided with the decline ofthe Board's government-sponsored partiality towards farmers.16

Union power was an important social issue during the 1970s in NewZealand, not least because of the resulting inefficiencies in meat processingthat were highlighted by the popular press.17 This article demonstrates thatthe roots of this power lie in favourable institutional arrangements andresulting patterns of interaction that stemmed from the Board's use oflicensing. To date, studies of the interaction between management and labourin the meat industry have made no attempt to locate the patterns describedwithin the product markets and institutional structures that constituted thebroader `environment' of industrial relations.18 This article corrects thisneglect of context by examining historically the `rich institutional structure'that constrained the product and labour `market participants' within theexport meat industry.19 It is only by analysing historically the resourcesindirectly supplied to meatworkers by the Board, as an unintendedconsequence of licensing, that the sources of union power in the meat industryin the period from 1952 to 1971 can be fully understood.

THEMEAT PRODUCERS BOARD

New Zealand has always been economically dependent on the export ofagricultural products. Three sets of commodities ^ meat, wool and dairyproducts ^ constituted more than 90 per cent of the aggregate value of exports

15 National Library of NewZealand (hereafterNLNZ), AlexanderTurnbull Library (hereafterATL), New Zealand Meat Industry Association Records (hereafter NZMIAR), series 90-163, box 6, D. J. C. Freeman, Annual Report, Minutes of Meat Industry EmployersAssociation Annual General Meeting, 3/10/1973, Wellington.

16 For changes in the Board's policies, see Bartley,The accountability, pp. 41^2.17 See Calder and Tyson,Meat acts, ch. 8.18 See Howells and Alexander, A strike; Howells, The Kerr-Siegel hypothesis; Geare, The

problem of industrial unrest; Geare, Seasonal influences; Turkington, Industrial conflict. Themost detailed of these studies, by Turkington, makes only fleeting reference to the MeatProducers Board.

19 Streeck, Social institutions and economic performance, p. 4.



during the 1920s. Of these, the contribution of meat exports was consistent atapproximately 20 per cent of the total. If New Zealand as an exporting nationwas largely dependent on the British market, in the case of meat its reliancewas almost total.20 From the 1920s until the mid-1950s, more than 95 per centof frozen meat was exported to the UK.21 Even in the 1960s, despite thegradual shift in New Zealand's trading partners, the lion's share of meatexports went to Britain (see table 1). Of these, the largest commodity wassheep meat, with the export of beef comprising, by volume, only 18 per centof total meat exports in 1954 and 21 per cent in 1964.22 Despite Britain's effortsto join the EEC, which if successful would have hurt New Zealand's exporttrade, the bulk of the period considered in this article was characterized byrelatively stable markets for meat exports, with some moves towardsdiversification in the mid-1960s.23

20 Robertson and Singleton, The old commonwealth, p. 154.21 NewZealand official yearbook, various years.22 NewZealand official yearbook 1968, pp. 644^5.23 For an analysis of the impact on New Zealand of Britain's first attempt to join the EEC, see

Robertson and Singleton, The old commonwealth.

Table 1. Destinations and market shares of meat classes

Year Lamb % Mutton % Beef %

1954 UK 100 UK 100 UK 100

1959 UK 98 UK 83 USA 82Greece 4UK 3

1964 UK 94 Japan 46 USA 56UK 32 UK 20Greece 6 W. Indies 4Germany 4 Pacific 3

Italy 2Greece 2

1969 UK 89 Japan 71 USA 54USA 2 UK 22 Canada 20

UK 10W. Indies 3Pacific 2

1974 UK 78 Japan 42 USA 69USA 2 Chile/Peru 3 Canada 15Japan 2 UK 3 W. Indies 2Greece 2 Pacific 2

Note: Market share over 2 per cent.Sources: Department of Statistics, New Zealand official yearbook (various years); Economic Serviceof the New Zealand Meat andWool Boards, Annual review of the sheep industry (various years).



Given New Zealand's reliance on agricultural exports, it is unremarkablethat successive governments introduced special measures to support farmers,who were subject to considerable fluctuations in the prices that these goodsfetched in overseas markets.24 The Meat Producers Board was established in1922, after a dramatic slump in the prices of agricultural exports a yearearlier, as the first of a number of statutory authorities created in theagricultural export sector.25 As the preamble to the Meat Export ControlAct 1921^2 indicates, the raison d'eª tre of the Meat Producers Board was todefend the interests of farmers, whose representatives dominated it. The Boardwas given the power to regulate all of the off-farm activities of the industryincluding, significantly, the processing, storage and shipment, and sale ofmeat in overseas markets.

Although it was constituted primarily as amarketing board, the influence oftheMeat Producers Board was felt throughout themeat industry.26 It acted inwhat it perceived to be the collective interests of farmers, first and foremost bychecking the advances of multinational meat companies in New Zealand andin the markets that connected farmers with consumers in Britain. There waswidespread belief amongst farmers that these companies ^ the so-called `MeatTrusts' ^ were somehow implicated in the collapse of prices in 1921.27 At ameeting in 1923, the Meat Producers Board declared:

this Board will look with an unfriendly eye upon: (a) The purchase byoverseas interests of any Freezing Works in New Zealand. (b) Theacquiring of any interest in New Zealand Freezing Works by overseasinterests. (c) The erection of new Freezing Works in New Zealand byoverseas interests.28

Although multinational meat processing companies had established asignificant foothold in New Zealand prior to the Board being created, themajority of freezing works was still New Zealand owned.29 Moreover, onlythe largest of these, the New Zealand Refrigeration Company, engaged inprocessing and export as vertically integrated activities. There existedalongside these larger operators a range of specialized processing companies,with no involvement in marketing, that processed livestock on contract forfarmers (and other parties). Similarly, specialist export companies, with no

24 See Fleming, Agricultural support policies, p. 336.25 See Capie, The first export monopoly control board. In 1924, the Dairy Board was

established, at the same time as controls over the marketing of fruit and honey wereintroduced; the Wool Board was set up, belatedly, in 1946.

26 Capie, The first export monopoly control board.27 Brooking, Economic transformation, p. 227.28 Cited in Hayward, Golden jubilee, p. 162.29 The British-based companies owned a number of freezing works: Borthwicks, at Waitara and

Paki Paki; North British and Hawkes Bay Farmers Meat, at Westshore; Vesteys, at Reotahi,Westfield, Taruwheru, Waiapoa and Tomoana.



involvement in meat processing, provided the option of selling ònconsignment' on behalf of small exporters, including farmers.30

This mixture of vertically integrated and independent (contracting) plantsprovided farmers with a wide range of options to dispose of their livestock, intheir search for high prices andminimal risk. Farmers could sell their livestockat numerous points along the export chain. They could sell livestock at thefarm gate, to a range of buyers, or maintain an interest beyond processingand into export. The Board's concern about multinational companies gaininggreater ownership of freezing works was the likelihood of further closures offreezing works (several bought by Borthwick and Vestey in 1920^3 wereimmediately closed), and the substitution of vertical integration for themarket mechanism. Together these developments would have limited theselling options enjoyed by farmers, thus diminishing their power as suppliers.To be sure, the Board was content to allowmultinational companies to exportlarge quantities of frozen meat from New Zealand, as long as they wereprevented from exercising power as buyers against farmers. Thus the Boardintervened through licensing to curb ^ rather than to replace ^ the verticallyintegrated companies, to fortify those avenues (such as the consignmentsystem) external to these operators, and to forestall closures of outlying andmarginal processing plants owned by local interests.31

The granting of a licence by the Board to a company did not guarantee thatbusiness throughput, nor did the licence secure an exclusive catchment orterritory for the company in which to buy livestock. A licence only permittedthe company to make offers to local farmers for stock, in competition withother licensed companies involved in the domestic meat industry. In addition,an òpen door' policy required licensees to accept stock for processing fromfarmers who wished to export meat on their own account or by consignment,rather than sell the stock to the processing company if the price they offeredwas too low.32 Licensing thus forestalled the possibility of multinational orlarge locally owned processing companies imposing near monopsonyconditions on farmers.

To the extent that licensing sustained a heterogeneous mix of companiesengaged in the processing and export of meat (see table 2), it had a significant,albeit proximate, effect on labour relations. While there are no consistenttime-series data available on market share, the limited evidence that existssuggests that there was a relatively even split between overseas and New

30 See Curtis, Markets as politics.31 As a result, the multinational companies frequently had to enter into contracts with small

operators to obtain stock and processing capacity. For example, the Auckland FarmersFreezing Company contracted to Borthwicks its plants at Morewa, Southdown andHorotiu.A vernacular company history discusses how the Board prevented Vestey from building newplants in the mid-1950s. See Lind, A cut above.

32 For a discussion of the òpen door' policy's benefits to farmers, seeReport of the commission, p. 20.



Zealand companies in the ownership of freezing works in the 1950s, and by1971 some 73 per cent of freezing works were owned by New Zealandcompanies.33 Although this pattern is doubtless not entirely attributable tolicensing, the counterfactual can be used to establish that the spread of firmswasmore diverse, and that competition for stockwas greater, than if the Boardhad not curtailed multinational companies.

A relevant comparative case is Argentina where, like New Zealand,agricultural exports were a mainstay of the economy and multinationalcompanies sought entry.34 By 1913, the British and American companies(primarily Vestey, Swift and Armour) dominated meat processing inArgentina, to the point where the market share of Argentinean companies

33 Hayward, Golden jubilee, p. 163; Turkington, Industrial conflict, p. 32; Calder and Tyson,Meatacts, p. 13.

34 Font, Export agriculture, p. 344.

Table 2. Meat processing companies in New Zealand

Number of plants

1920^9 1930^9 1940^9 1950^9 1960^9

Multinational meat processing companiesBorthwicks 3 5 5 4 3Vestey 5 3 4 4 4Swift ^ 1 2 2 2Co-operative Wholesale Society ^ ^ 2 2 2North British and Hawkes Bay Farmers Meat 1 ^ ^ ^ ^

NewZealand-owned companiesAuckland Farmers Freezing 3 3 3 3 3Alliance Freezing ^ ^ ^ ^ 1East Coast Co-operative Freezing 1 ^ ^ ^ ^Ocean Beach Freezing 1 ^ ^ ^ ^Feilding Farmers Freezing 1 ^ ^ ^ ^Gear Meat 1 1 1 1 1Gisborne Sheep-Farmers FrozenMeat 2 2 2 ^ ^Hawkes Bay Farmers Meat 1 1 1 1 1Hellabys 1 1 1 1 1Hicks Bay Farmers Meat 1 ^ ^ ^ ^National Mortgage Agency of NZ 1 1 ^ ^ ^Nelson Freezing 1 1 1 1 1New Zealand Refrigerating 7 6 5 5 5New Zealand Meat Packing & Bacon 1 ^ ^ ^ ^Southland Freezing 2 2 2 2 2South Otago Freezing 1 1 1 1 1Wanganui Meat Freezing 1 ^ ^ ^ ^

Source: Curtis, Producers, appendix 1.



was less than 12 per cent.35 Such was the perceived power of these companiesthat in 1923 an anti-trust act was introduced, albeit with little effect, in anattempt to defend the interests of meat producers.36 The Argentinean `MeatWar' of 1925, between Britain's Vestey brothers and the American Swift &Company, paradoxically resulted in a severe blow to the smaller meatpackingcompanies, with the market share of Argentinean companies falling to 10 percent.37 Moreover, it has been argued that the cost of this confrontation was inpart offloaded to the ranchers.38

If the multinational meat processing firms used their market power inArgentina to the detriment of the ranchers, and to squeeze smaller firms outof the market, in New Zealand the Board forestalled the dominance of thesesamemultinational firms. Capie, for one, argues that in the 1930s, `The Boardprevented in the freezing business anything analogous to the powerfulorganization of the Argentine Frigoroficos [meat packing companies]'.39

Table 2 suggests that the influence of the Board extended beyond that pointin time, sustaining a diverse range of companies in the industry throughoutthe period under consideration. That the Board's interventions throughlicensing increased the level of competition can, in part, be inferred from thesheer number of companies in the market, compared to the Argentine.40 Inaddition, overcapacity in meat processing throughout the farming districts ofNew Zealand can in part be attributed to the effects of licensing.41 That is,there was greater potential to process livestock, in terms of the utilization ofplant and premises, than there was livestock available.

Competition for stock, in combination with the inherent seasonality of theindustry, meant that the level of throughput was paramount to meatprocessing companies. As one of their representative bodies notedretrospectively,

There is no single factor more important to the processor than throughput.Because of this, the farmer has traditionally been `courted' by processingcompanies to supply stock. This has been done by offering premiums andother incentives.42

Any interruption to throughput due to strike action, or other forms ofemployee-induced work stoppage, was problematical. Indeed, one of the key

35 Smith, Politics and beef, p. 68.36 Smith, Politics and beef, p. 80.37 See Smith, Politics and beef, p. 113; Knightley,The Vestey affair, p. 66.38 Smith, Politics and beef, p. 114.39 Capie, The first export monopoly control board, p. 140.40 A Commission of Inquiry into the industry, in 1959, drew attention to a significant level of

competition in purchasing stock from farmers. Also, the level of competition for stock washeightened by the number of exporters (many without an involvement in meat processing)in the industry. Report of the commission, pp. 10, 23.

41 See Calder and Tyson,Meat acts, p. 15.42 New Zealand Freezing Companies Association,The NewZealand meat export industry, p. 28.



issues that the employers' association was to raise with theMinister of Labourin 1958, was the `Vulnerability of the Industry to direct action methods'.43

This vulnerability was exacerbated by persistent employer disunity. To theextent that licensing made companies vulnerable to farmers as suppliers, inproduct markets, it also made them vulnerable to organized labour, in labourmarkets, by creating a classic hold-up situation.

UNIONORGANIZATION, STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

A union's external strength resides primarily `in the external sanctions it canbring to bear on employers in negotiations'.44 By the same token, a union'sinternal strength derives from its ability to organize and control its members,to ensure a stable membership of committed unionists and a robust form oforganization. For the meatworkers' unions, a key source of external strengthwas employer fragmentation and the reliance of meat processing firms onuninterrupted throughput. However, the unions could capitalize upon thesepotential power resources, unintentionally supplied by the Board, only afterthey had shored up their internal strength by achieving control of laboursupply.45

The 1950s and 1960s was a propitious time for unions generally, with buoy-ant labour market conditions and labour shortages being commonplace.46

However, the favourable economic backdrop, and the existence of anarbitration system that secured union rights legally, did not automaticallyand unambiguously translate into internal strength for the meatworkers'unions. That is because, in this period, they were organizing deskilled workerswithin largely casual labour markets. This stemmed from the effects on thelabour market of the inherent seasonality of the industry, which in NewZealand's case was amongst the highest internationally (see table 3). Whilefigures in the table relate to the early 1980s, if anything, the killing seasonwas shorter in New Zealand in the 1950s and early 1960s, when it wascommonly referred to by meatworkers as the `100 day season'.

In turn, seasonality resulted in insecurity of employment and earnings forindividual meatworkers, it allowed for discriminatory preferential hiring andfiring by employers from one season to another, and it sapped the internal

43 NLNZ, ATL, NZMIAR, series 90-163, box 2, Minutes of a Meeting of the Executive of theNew Zealand Freezing Companies Industrial Union of Employers, 7/10/1958.

44 Fox, and Flanders, The reform of collective bargaining, p. 155.45 In this period, the meatworkers' unions took the form of federal associations comprising

branches that represented districts of New Zealand. The main branches were Otago andSouthland, Canterbury, Marlborough and Nelson, Wellington, Taranaki and Gisborne,Auckland, and North Auckland. Notably, the branches were not united into a single,national, union. See Roth, Chronology.

46 Pearson and Thorns, Eclipse of equality, p. 54.



strength of the unions whose elected representatives could be excluded fromemployment. The impact of seasonality on the labour market wascompounded by employer-initiated changes to the nature of work. In 1932,Borthwicks and Vestey had introduced a variant of the assembly line called`the chain' into freezing works, which eliminated a craft form of productionwherein `solo-butchers' aided by teams of labourers slaughtered anddismembered animals.47 Due to the deskilling effects of the chain, themeatworkers' unions could not rely, as their craft union antecedents had, onstrategies of securing scarce craft skill as the foundation of their organizationalcapacity. Instead, the unions sought to control labour supply by formulatingseniority rules at each plant. Under these rules, meatworkers who had been inemployment for the most consecutive killing seasons had the right to startwork first and to finish last each killing season. Seniority rules also allowedthe unions to impose discipline on their members, as transgressions againstunion policy resulted in a loss of seniority.

The majority of plants had some form of seniority agreement by the early1960s. Managers had some interest in having a stable supply of skilledworkers, who they could draw on from one season to another.48 But thetrade-off was that seniority abrogated their right to hire who they wished inwhatever order they wished. Thus, at some plants the rules were agreed towith management, but at others they were imposed on management with thethreat of strike action. Seniority increased the internal strength of the unions,which allowed them to capitalize upon the external sources of strength thatstemmed from employer disunity, to win gains from employers in negotiationsover wages and conditions of employment.

The power of the union in bargaining was based on the ability to disruptprocessing, opting for industrial action which circumvented the formalmechanisms of conciliation and dispute resolution, such as the NationalDisputes Committee. In the 1950s, a common complaint of the employers

47 See Roth,Trade unions, p. 52.48 Ibid.

Table 3. Seasonality in meat processing

Country Days per year slaughtering Hours per week slaughtering

New Zealand 160 40Australia 230 40USA 250 50UK 250 60France 240 50

Note: The report is undated, but these data were collected over a six-month period some time dur-ing 1982^4.Source: Evans, Cost-competitiveness, section 2.6.



was that `Awards negotiated in good faith have hardly been made when theworkers resort to direct action to gain benefits that they have been unable toobtain in Conciliation Council.'49 In practice, the National Award that wasnegotiated through a centralized process, involving the peak representativesof the employers' associations and the meatworkers' unions, established onlyminimum hourly rates and piece rates from which the local representatives ofthe union would then lever better deals. A 1955 booklet issued to uniondelegates noted that `we have two Awards, the one that is printed on the wall,and the one that is made day in and day out by negotiations in works andfactories all over the country'.50

The most effective tactic employed by the unions was to isolate and targetthe operations of individual plants, chiefly by taking strike action, or bythreatening to do so. This strategy required the coordination of union effortat the level of plants (union sub-branches) and their contiguous competitors.Strikes rendered plants unable to process stock, while their competitors werefree to do so. Freezing works ran to detailed schedules, whereby stock waspurchased some days, weeks or even months prior to slaughter. Therefore,unexpected and unplanned delays in the processing of stock impacted almostimmediately on the arrangementsmade by themeat processing companywithfarmers, and other parties such as the Railways Department and truckingcompanies. Furthermore, farmers were fickle suppliers of stock, andcompanies that were beleaguered by industrial unrest tended to lose theirsupport.

The processing plants of the export meat industry were among the moststrike-prone work sites in New Zealand. Table 4 shows the proportion of totalstrike activity that the meat industry comprised. The level of strike activityclimbed to the point where, during the 1960s, more than one-quarter of allstrikes occurred in this industry. From 1963 to 1973,more than half of the totalworking days lost in New Zealand were in the meat industry.

To be sure, the frequency of strikes differed between individual plants,companies and regions.51 These differences notwithstanding, the vastmajority of strikes occurred at the level of individual plants or departments,and many took the form of short-lived `bargaining strikes'.52 Although thereare a variety of reasons for this high level of industrial disputation, union andemployer records from this period suggest that strikes were a deliberatestrategy of the union in order to target the weakness of the employers.

49 NZNL, ATL, NZMIAR, series 90-163, box 2, Minutes of Meeting of the Executive of theNew Zealand Freezing Company Industrial Union of Employees, 7/10/1958.

50 MBL, MB340, Unsorted Material, New Zealand Meatworkers Union Archives. NewZealand Freezing Works and Related Trades Industrial Association of Workers Handbook,The union makes us strong, November, 1955, p. 17.

51 Turkington, Industrial conflict, pp. 41^55.52 Turkington, Industrial conflict, p. 25.



Moreover, the number of strikes can be taken as an index of both internal andexternal union strength.

The emphasis placed by the union on disrupting the share of throughputenjoyed by individual plants and firms, or threatening such disruptions, wasmatched by a disinterest in disrupting the flow of exports. Despite the yearsof intense industrial unrest in the processing sector of the industry, the exportof meat was rarely, if ever, curtailed. The relative stability in the flow ofexports was partly a function of the standardized character of the maincommodity, frozen meat, which meant that an export order could be filledfrom a number of plants. Thus, in the rare instances when national levelindustrial action jeopardized an export order, the Board could readily brokeran agreement to supply the affected customer frommassive stocks kept in coldstores in New Zealand or overseas. Accordingly, to disrupt the flow of exportswould have required the meatworkers' unions to stop work in the majority offreezing works, and to do so for a sustained period. Such coordinated, nationalstrike action was rarely attempted. To some extent, this was a product of thestrongly regional character of the unions, but such a strategy was in any casenot in the interests of the unions, as it would necessarily have drawn farmersand the all-powerful Board into the fray.

THE SOURCEOF EMPLOYERWEAKNESS

This section identifies the aspects of employer weakness emanating from theBoard's interventions, which were a key source of external strength for themeatworkers' unions. Licensing consolidated a diverse pattern of ownershipin the industry wherein all firms ^ large and small ^were vulnerable to farmersacting as suppliers. The diverse array of firms, their emphasis on securingadequate throughput, and the intense competition for stock elicited by thissystem, weakened and splintered firms qua employers as a `bloc'. The meat

Table 4. Strikes in meat processing compared to all industry

Year Strikes % Employees on strike % Working days lost %

1943 11.5 5.5 3.71948 13.1 13.9 5.91953 6.8 1.0 12.91958 10.2 20.1 23.91963 20.0 51.9 58.51968 26.1 58.6 61.21973 24.4 63.0 52.2

Source: Department of Statistics,NewZealand monthly abstract of statistics (various years).



processing companies were split between the North Island FreezingCompanies Association (NIFCA) and the South Island Freezing CompaniesAssociation (SIFCA). An attempt at a form of national organization occurredin 1948, when representatives of the NIFCA and SIFCA established the NewZealand Freezing Companies' Industrial Union of Employers.53 Thisorganizationwas registered under the Industrial Conciliation andArbitrationlegislation, and it met regularly through the forum of the Joint LabourCommittee of the two regional associations. However, readings of the minutesof this organization suggest that it was stricken by disunity and thus failed in itsrole as a coordination mechanism.

Heterogeneity rendered collective mobilizations by firms difficult, and theirindividualistic focus on throughput made them susceptible to isolation andaction by the meatworkers' unions. Although employers certainly cooperatedat a national level, and established mechanisms such as a National DisputesCommittee to settle disputes, attempts to resist employee demands duringdisputes were continually undermined by individual companies that struckdeals with the unions, over wages and conditions, to secure throughput.Throughout the 1950s, there were constant attempts to reaffirm the principlethat the directions of the Joint Labour Committee would be followed, andfrequent calls for unity were made, but these were ignored when individualcompanies became embroiled in disputes with the unions.54 In 1956, arepresentative of the NIFCA, speaking of the situation in the South Island,expressed his concern about `developments in the past season when concessionshad been given under pressure by individual companies'.55 Attempts tomobilize in unison against the unions over a particular issue in disputefrequently failed, as companies broke ranks to avoid disruptions to production.

In 1957, the Chairman of the Employers Union commented in frustrationthat, `It was astonishing that in a compact industry such as the freezing industrythe employers were not able to act in concert and adopt a united front on alllabour matters.'56 This problem of disunity was to continue to bedevil theemployers, in both the North and South Islands. In an illustrative case, theHawkes Bay Farmers Meat Company broke ranks in 1960, by agreeing to anabove award payment. The Chairman referred to `the unilateral and irres-ponsible action of the Hawkes Bay Farmers Meat Co. Ltd, gratuitously giving

53 NZNL, ATL, NZMIAR, series 90-163, box 2, Minutes of Special General Meeting ofFreezing Companies, 26/8/1948.

54 NZNL, ATL, NZMIAR, series 90-163, box 3, North Island Freezing Companies'Association, Minutes of Annual General Meeting, 31/7/1956, and New Zealand FreezingCompany Industrial Union of Employees, series 90-163, box 2, Minutes of ExecutiveMeeting, 9/2/1956.

55 NZNL, ATL, NZMIAR series 90-163, box 3, North Island Freezing Companies'Association, Minutes of Annual General Meeting, 31/7/1956.

56 NZNL, ATL, NZMIAR, series 90-163, box 2, New Zealand Freezing Company IndustrialUnion of Employees, Minutes of Annual General Meeting, 16/7/1957.



its mutton and lamb slaughtermen an increase of 8 shillings per 100 on theadditional payment for obnoxious stock'.57 This move sparked a chain reaction,whereby other firms both inside and outside the region were targeted by theunions to pay the same rate.58 The minutes of a meeting of the executive of theEmployers Union record that `The Auckland companies were aghast at theactions of the Hawke's Bay Farmers Co.', as shortly thereafter the AucklandUnion approached the companies in its region to obtain the same rate.59 Thiswas not an isolated incident, as the mutual support between employers thatwas espoused and reaffirmed at meetings of their national organizationfrequently evaporated in the face of industrial pressure from the unions, as theytargeted individual firms. In the face of such pressure, companies often sought toprecipitate a multi-employer (even a national) stoppage, to allow matters toescalate so they could be dealt with by united action of all companies, therationale being that `one Company in trouble was very vulnerable butCompanies should support each other by taking action to bring about acomplete stoppage rather than allow themselves to be picked off one by one'.60

However, the problem with this tactic was that companies did not support oneanother.

The case of theHawkes Bay FarmersMeat Company illustrates another keyfacet of the disunity that wracked the employers' organization ^ freezingcompanies would often not support each other by refraining from killing stockfrom a plant that was stopped. H. Crichton, a representative of a plant inWairoa that was owned by the American meat packing company, Swift &Company, is recorded as having expressed the view that, `If a claim by theslaughtermen was resisted and this resulted in a strike the stock from the areawould go to Hawke's Bay [Farmers Co.] and Wairoa could not afford to losevolume. This was the selfish view but if all works were prepared to resist hewould join with them.' Whilst one member of the organization `said hisCompany would want to be assured that Companies would stand together inthe event of a common refusal culminating in strikes', P. Mansill of theCooperative Wholesale Society (another meat processing company) `said hecould not give an assurance much as he would like to. It would be entirely thejudgement of his Company how long a strike would last.'61 While the official

57 NZNL, ATL, NZMIAR, series 90-163, box 2, New Zealand Freezing Company IndustrialUnion of Employees, Minutes of Executive Meeting, 15/11/1960.

58 For example, Vestey's plant at Tomoana readily acceded to the union demand on this issue.NZNL, ATL, NZMIAR, series 90-163, box 3, Minutes of Meeting of the Joint Executives ofthe North and South Island Freezing Companies Associations, 16/11/1960.


60 NZNL, ATL, NZMIAR, series 90-163, box 3, North Island Freezing Companies'Association, Minutes of Annual General Meeting, 31/7/1956.

61 NZNL, ATL, NZMIAR, series 90-163, box 3, Minutes of Meeting of the Joint Executives ofthe North and South Island Freezing Companies Associations, 16/11/1960.



policy was that companies should act in concert, escalating a local dispute intoa wider one, in practice companies would not do so.

As price takers in the export market, there were additional factors that, inthe context of intense inter-firm rivalry effected by licensing, increased thepropensity for firms to undermine one another in labour price fixing. Arelatively high ratio of fixed costs to total costs (see table 8), combined withnot insubstantial asset specificity, provided added impetus to resolve disputesquickly by acceding to increases in labour rates. The alacrity with which firmssought to resume work reflected the desire to capture market share in order todefray their fixed costs.62 Also there was a likely firm size effect, as the largemultinational companies were more willing and able to pay higher wages inorder to obtain a larger share of the product to be processed. Although data onthe proportion of total cost represented by wages in large firms compared withsmall firms are unavailable, the minutes of the employers' association suggestthat the smallerNewZealand owned firms endeavoured to take a tougher line,with their representatives being vociferous on this matter at meetings.However, it was licensing that sustained a range of large companies and smallcompanies in the first place.

To the extent that there was competition between firms for stock at theregional level, firms frequently `poached' stock during disputes. A submissionby the North Island Freezing Workers Federation to the 1973 Commission ofInquiry into the Meat Industry, noted the `hunger' on the part of theprocessing companies for stock,

with the Companies having buyers stationed at various points distant to theslaughterhouses, and with the Companies being prepared to buy stockvirtually within hailing distance of another freezing works, and beingprepared to transport that stock in some cases over 100 miles to their ownworks.63

Even if processing at adjacent works ceased, one of the effects of disruptionswas to decrease farmer `loyalty' to particular companies and plants that hada bad record of industrial disputes, thereby furthering pressure on theemployers to obtain cooperation from labour, particularly at the height ofthe killing season.

These problems of disunity were exacerbated in the 1960s, as strike actionintensified and the arbitration system's legal constraints on the right to strikebecame unenforceable.64 Recognizing that penalty provisions of the

62 For a discussion of the competitive behaviour of firms with high fixed costs and specific assets,see Oster,Modern competitive analysis, pp. 38^9.

63 MBL, MB340, Unsorted Material, New Zealand Meatworkers Union Archives. Submissionby the North Island Freezing Workers Federation to Commission of Inquiry into the MeatIndustry, August 1973.

64 See Roth,Trade unions, pp. 100^1.



Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act would not be invoked by theDepartment of Labour, in 1963 F. Stanley (of the Alliance FreezingCompany) opined:

I believe that unless we are prepared to do something about unifying ourranks we are going to continue being the defensive party in the industrialwar we are engaged in. We have all the power we need providing we havethe commonsense to act as a body and not allow ourselves to be picked offone by one. The requirements of business competition should not preventus from acting in a united manner in the industrial field, and I am firmlyconvinced that those whomay think that this field can be used competitivelywill find their business under worker management in the long run.65

However, the Employers' Union records suggest that individual firmscontinued to seek to obtain a competitive edge by making concessions on ratesand conditions, in order to `purchase' industrial peace and thus to minimizeinterruptions to throughput. Indeed, the major sticking point over a proposalput forward by F. Stanley, in the interests of `presenting a common front to theworkers unions', was `the power that he suggested be placed in the hands of the[Employers' Industrial] Union to order the stoppage of adjacent or districtplants'.66 Individual companies did not wish to give up the right to actindependently. In the context of unions that targeted individual companiesand plants, using what one union representative described as `the method oftaking shed [plant-level] action to increase the rate', this independence was asource of considerable weakness.67

Concessions granted were frequently used by the unions as precedents, andwere spread to other plants, and then subsequently were lodged as part of theclaims in the National Award negotiations, spreading from one island to theother.68 The split between different unions and regional associationsencouraged a type of `leapfrogging', as union officials often felt that theywould face criticism from the rank-and-file if one of their counterpart unionorganizations had a claim approved, and they did not. In 1961, theWellington and Auckland district unions, which were not members of theunions' National Association, obtained an ex gratia payment for pieceworkers.In a debate over whether the Association would seek this claim, S. Arnst, theSecretary, remarked that `If we sit on the fence and get nothing and the peopleoutside the National Association move and do get something, where would we


66 Ibid.67 MBL, MB33/17a Disputes to 1972. Minutes of South Island Conference of Freezing Works

and Related Trades Representatives, 5/12/1959.68 See MBL, MB33/17a Disputes to 1972. Minutes of South Island Conference of Freezing

Works and Related Trades Representatives, 5/12/1959.



be?'69 Paradoxically, union fragmentation between the two islands andbetween industrial districts fuelled upward wage drift, relative to the rest ofmanufacturing.

By capitalizing upon the weaknesses of the employers, through acombination of strike threat and action, coupled with centralized anddecentralized bargaining, the meatworkers' unions were able to achievesignificant wage gains. Table 5 demonstrates that, for the majority of theperiod under consideration, meatworkers' real wage levels increased and wereconsistently higher than those of other employees in the manufacturing sector.However, it is important to examine the effect of factors other than licensingon these wage movements. Table 6 indicates that labour productivity in themeat industry was almost static, while estimates by Pearce show that labourproductivity in manufacturing increased by 43 per cent from 1953 to 1970.70

Thus it is unlikely that the relative wage movements in meat processingcompared to manufacturing can be explained by shifts in labour productivity.In addition, the labour shortages that characterized the industry in the early1950s abated during the latter part of this decade and in the 1960s, but realwages continued to increase steadily throughout this period.

It is possible that increases in the demand for meat caused by rising incomesin Britain impacted on prices for meat, which, in the context of increasing

69 MBL, MB33/17a Disputes to 1972. Minutes of Special Meeting of the Executive of theCanterbury, Marlborough, and Nelson Freezing Works and Related Trades Union, 13/1/1961.

70 Pearce, Where is New Zealand going, vol. 2, p. 456. Pearce's estimates are based on the value ofraw materials turned over per paid employee hour. In estimating labour productivity in themeat industry, total employee hours are not available from official publications. Thus a roughindicator of labour productivity has been constructed. As the productivity estimates areconstructed differently, they cannot be used to compare directly rates of labour productivityin the meat industry and manufacturing, but they do give an indication of trends over time.

Table 5. Wages of meatworkers

Year Annual real wage Annual real wage of all Annual real wage ofof meatworkers manufacturing workers meatworkers/manufacturing1973 ($) 1973 ($) workers

1953 3701.2 2510.0 1.241958 3661.5 2856.2 1.281963 3905.9 3110.1 1.261968 3902.0 3174.5 1.231973 4860.0 3715.0 1.31

Sources: Department of Statistics, New Zealand official yearbook 1982, p. 919; Department of Statis-tics, Report on the industrial production statistics of New Zealand (various years); Department of Statis-tics, Statistics of industrial production 1973, p. 44. Consumer Price Index: Pearce,Where is NewZealandgoing?, vol. 2, p. 30.



quantities sold, heightened labour demand leading to wage increasesindependent of the effects of licensing. On the other hand, in developedcountries the income elasticity of demand for foodstuffs, including meat,generally is low. Moreover, this was a period of deficiency payments inBritain, which kept the price of meat artificially lower than in other Europeancountries.71 Meat was also being dumped in Britain, which limited priceincreases. Unlike other countries, Britain offered free access to meat fromAustralasia, but at relatively low prices. Table 7 shows that prices for NewZealand lamb at Smithfield in London from 1957 to 1963 tended to decline,while real wages rose. Combined with static labour productivity, this suggests

Table 6. Productivity of meatworkers

Year Number of Export meat production Export meat production/meatworkers (tonnes) number of meatworkers

1948 11,821 349,008 29.51953 11,516 329,047 28.61958 13,748 411,773 29.91963 16,995 516,376 30.31968 19,555 581,251 29.71973 24,047 691,992 28.8

Note: Export meat production refers to shipping weights.Sources: Department of Statistics, New Zealand official yearbook 1982, p. 923; Department of Statis-tics, Report on the industrial production statistics of New Zealand (various years); Department of Statis-tics, Statistics of industrial production 1973, p. 44.

Table 7. Index of New Zealand lamb prices in UK

New Zealand lamb English lamb

1955 100 1001956 94 991957 104 1031958 98 1021959 78 881960 95 1041961 80 871962 88 971963 90 991964 101 1061965 104 1071966 101 103

Note: The base year is 1955. The quarterly index has been combined to provide a single indexnumber each year.Source: Calculated from Commonwealth Economic Committee,Meat 1961, 1963, 1967.

71 See Bowers, British agricultural policy.



that, if not all, then a substantial part of the increase in meatworkers' realwages and the wage differential between the meat industry andmanufacturing evident in table 5 are accounted for by regulation in the formof licensing, mediated by union action.

Given the limitations to expansion through licensing, the various forms oflabour-induced hold-up that companies were subject to, and higher labourrates than elsewhere in manufacturing, the multinational companiescontinued to operate in New Zealand in the period in question primarilybecause the export of sheep meat to the abundant markets in Britain waspotentially lucrative.72 Money was to be made, as long as there was stock toprocess, and as long as there was labour willing to process that stock in a timelymanner. For meat processing firms, the ratio of labour costs to total costs wasconsistently less than 20 per cent (see table 8), which placed a greaterpremium upon getting employee cooperation in order to sustain throughputthan minimizing labour costs. By the same token, the high level of fixed costsand specific assets imposed barriers to exit. Employers were prepared topurchase cooperation through higher wages. The resulting wage drift, asunions levered up labour rates across the industry, was of greater concern tothe industry association than it ever was to the competing companies.

Table 8. Labour cost share in total cost

Fixed costs less Variable costs Total costs Total wages Labourdepreciation (labour cost) cost/total cost

1952 18,874 127,536 146,410 17,592 0.121955 30,546 180,876 211,422 22,788 0.111958 38,736 206,602 245,338 29,398 0.121961 58,080 215,396 273,476 36,970 0.141964 71,182 267,082 338,264 44,100 0.131967 90,055 293,261 383,316 55,233 0.141970 141,134 462,644 603,778 81,597 0.141973 195,803 751,102 946,905 133,332 0.14

Note: The table is denominated in nominal dollars (000). Fixed costs comprise the following cate-gories in the Statistical Reports: `land and building', `plant and machinery', `rent', ìnsurance',ìnterest' and `repairs and maintenance'. The depreciation figure listed in the Reports is deductedfrom fixed costs. The interest component of fixed costs is estimated for 1952^4, based on the figuresfor the preceding two years. Variable costs comprise `total wages', `materials', `power, light andfuel' and òther expenses of production' (such as office expenses).Sources: Department of Statistics, Statistical report on the factory production; Department of Statistics,Report on the industrial production statistics; Department of Statistics, Statistics of industrial production(various years).

72 Data on company profitability is not available, but anecdotal evidence suggests that meatprocessing companies made reasonable profits, which in the case of Vestey's operation wasassisted by elaborate tax avoidance schemes. See Calder and Tyson, Meat acts, p. 31;Knightley,The Vestey affair.



CONCLUSION

This paper has focused on one of the key institutions that forestalled thetransformation of New Zealand agriculture, by preventing the subsumptionof family-labour farming. The result was a structure of agriculture in whichfarmers were dominant both on and off the farm. They owned their land andcontrolled the productive activities undertaken on it. As producers they werevested with considerable control over processing and marketing through theirmembership of the Board. The principal effect of the Board's interventions onlabour relations stemmed from its use of licensing to sustain a wide range ofmeat processing companies. The intended consequences of licensing includedthe limitation of multinational companies; the main unintended consequencewas the empowerment of organized labour. Processing companies werefragmented and unable to achieve a level of unity, through an employers'association, that would have allowed them to resist collectively the tactics ofthe unions. Not only were these companies weak buyers of stock, they wereweak buyers of labour. Such was the importance of industrial licensing to thepower that the meatworkers' unions exercised within the meat-exportindustry that the principal cause of their eventual defeat was thetransformation of licensing in 1981.73 This institutional shift explains thefriable nature of their power several years before other traditional unions inNew Zealand were challenged by neo-liberal labour legislation.74

There remains the question why the Board indirectly sustained inefficientpractices, given that greater efficiency in meat processing may haveincreased the income received from the sale of their meat in overseasmarkets. In this regard any concerns of the Board for efficiency gains wereoffset by the desire to maximize the number of family-labour farmersengaged in production and export, including some relatively inefficientfarmers.75 As a result, the approach favoured by the Board was more one ofaveraging among producers than one of seeking to increase efficiency at all

73 The Board shifted emphasis to licensing freezing works only in terms of pollution control andhygiene requirements; companies thus were returned sovereignty in the ownership andoperation of works. One referee noted that changes in the Board's activities could be framedin terms of a transaction-costs approach. Principally, licensing lowered the cost to farmers oftransacting with processors and other intermediaries in order to sell stock. By giving rise to ahold-up situation, transaction costs were inadvertently transferred to employers, whichimpacted negatively on the efficiency of processing as it allowed unions to actopportunistically by extracting economic rents from processing firms. The vocabulary andanalysis of transaction costs would be useful in analysing how changes in the institutionalform of governance in the industry during 1980s resulted in the negation of the unions'industrial power. That negation has as much to do with institutional change, and a re-allocation of transaction costs amongst the key actors, as it does with the abolition of thearbitration system in 1991. This is a topic for future research.

74 For a discussion of these challenges, see Harbridge and Honeybone, External legitimacy.75 See Fleming, Agricultural support policies, pp. 350^1.



costs. To be sure, one of the key goals of the Board in the 1920s and 1930s wasthe reduction of costs to farmers, and it is likely that this remained a priorityduring the 1950s and 1960s.76 By forestalling vertical integration, licensingno doubt limited the potential for firms to realize economies of scale, whilethe labour hoarding strategy of the unions limited the introduction of newtechnologies. However, also a priority of the Board was to sustain a range ofmarket options for farmers to sell stock, rather than having these optionssubsumed within the vertically integrated multinational meat processingcompanies. Certainly, the collective benefits to farmers of licensingoutweighed the extra costs (to them) associated with the extraction ofeconomic rents by the unions. Labour costs were a small proportion of totalcosts in meat processing, so inefficient practices, resulting from meatworkersbeing provided with the key resource of production hold up, were a relativelylow price to pay for farmers being empowered in relation to processors by theBoard. Labour practices aside, the inability to realize efficiencies of large-scale production and the lack of technical progress only became pressingafter the saturation and subsequent closure of markets in the EuropeanEconomic Community during the 1970s. In the period of secure markets,farmers reaped the benefits of licensing at the farm gate or auction wherethey sold their stock to processors and to a host of other intermediaries.Traditionally, there have been few links perceived between the character of

the employment relationship and the trajectory of agricultural developmentin New Zealand. In order to explain the pattern of union strength andemployer weakness in the export meat industry, there is a need to go bothbeyond the narrow confines of employment law, and below the broaderconsiderations of the economic cycle, to focus on the role of institutions such asthe Meat Producers Board in constituting and empowering collective actorsin labour markets. It was the resolution by the Board of dilemmas facingfarmers, beyond the walls of the freezing works, which set the parameters oflabour relations in meat processing. Thus the Board paradoxicallyconstituted a link between the enduring economic and political significanceof family-labour farmers, who clearly were hostile to unionism, and theindustrial strength of one of the most strike-prone groups of workers. Thatthese groups traditionally have been at loggerheads, industrially andpolitically, has for too long obscured the rich institutional connections thatbound their fortunes together.

76 See Capie, Australian and New Zealand competition, p. 47; Evans, A history of agriculturalproduction, p. 108.



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