Westland told to take Gloriavale milk

The High Court has ordered Westland Dairy Company to continue collecting milk from the farms owned by the Gloriavale Christian community.

Westland announced earlier this year it would cease taking Gloriavale milk following an Employment Court ruling that several of the Christian community’s businesses used child labour and treated workers as volunteers when they were employees entitled to be paid minimum wage.

This led to Gloriavale’s Canaan Farming Dairy Ltd seeking a High Court injunction that would force Westland to continue collecting the milk.

In a decision publicly released yesterday, Justice Jan-Marie Doogue ordered Westland to keep collecting milk from Canaan’s farms Bell Hill, Gloriavale and Glen Hopeful ‘‘subject to the condition that Canaan not employ any minors or associate partners under the age of 18 on its farms’’.

‘‘There is no evidence before the court to establish that at the time the injunction was sought Canaan was currently in breach of its obligations as an employer,’’ she said.

During an earlier court hearing, Gloriavale’s solicitor Richard Raymond, KC, argued the farms were completely separate from the businesses related to the

Employment Court ruling.

Any suggestion Gloriavale’s farms were not adhering to employment law was ‘‘knee-jerk, hyped up nonsense’’, he said, and Westland had ‘‘completely overplayed the issues’’.

Trying to lump the farms in with Gloriavale’s other businesses and tar them with the same brush was ‘‘disingenous’’, Raymond submitted.

In response, Westland’s lawyer, James Craig, said the Employment Court ruling was directly relevant to Gloriavale’s farms, as workers would often rotate their duties between the farms and the businesses in question under an associate partnership programme set up by Gloriavale.

In her decision, Justice Doogue said even if Westland was advancing its right to refuse milk for some other reason than those stipulated in the contract, the evidential basis for this was weak.

She pointed out there was no evidence before the court of actual loss of income for Westland, nor that any of its customers threatened to terminate or suspend its relationship with Westland.

A statement from Westland Dairy said its relationships with farmer suppliers were extremely important, and the decision to suspend collection from Gloriavale farms was based on ‘‘concerning employment and social issues identified by the courts’’.