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Story: Shops

Weekend trading protest, 1980

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Weekend trading protest, 1980

Shop Employees Union delegates organised this protest about plans to reinstate weekend trading in 1980. Their banner and balloons read, ‘Don’t weaken the weekend’. Their concerns centred on shop workers having to work at weekends and miss out on time with their families. Protests failed to stop the reform, as people wanted to shop in the weekends.

Using this item

Alexander Turnbull Library, Dominion Post Collection (PA-Group-00685)

Reference: EP/1980/0436/18a

by John Nicholson

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page

Carl Walrond, Shops – Unions, pay and working hours, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/21224/weekend-trading-protest-1980 (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Carl Walrond, published 6 April 2010, updated 19 February 2026.