Open Country, New Zealand's sole significant challenger to Fonterra's domination of New Zealand's milk supplies, is facing its first threat of industrial action.
According to a press release by the New Zealand Dairy Workers Union, workers at the Waharoa Open Country Cheese site have voted in favour of strike action because of a refusal by the company to negotiate a fair collective agreement.
The eight day strike is scheduled to begin on September 16.


Waharoa factory.

Open Country's chief executive officer Mark Fankhauser says he is disappointed about the strike notice, especially as the parties are due to go to mediation on September 9.
'We hope they will not go ahead, but we have made plans for the worst case scenario as we have a responsibility to our farmers. We have had a tremendous amount of support from other staff within the company including administrative staff and farmers who have also volunteered to help us and I am comfortable and confident that we will still be collecting milk.”
Mark declined to discuss the nature of the claims, saying instead that the company was still committed to ‘good faith bargaining'.
However, SunLive has seen a letter sent by the company to their suppliers, which claims the company has enjoyed five years of industrial calm that was broken within just eight weeks of the union entering the site.
The letter, which is signed by Mark Fankhauser and general manager Tim Slade, says the union's initial demands would have amounted to a 46 per cent increase in labour costs – although these were subsequently reduced. However, at the point when negotiations broke down, the company claims the union was still demanding changes that would increase labour costs by over 15 per cent.
The union is claiming Open Country has an aggressive anti-union, anti worker stance and has already tried unsuccessfully via an application to the Employment Relations Authority to stop the union coming onsite to represent workers.