Shoppers cheer as supermarket strike ends
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Shoppers here breathed a sigh of relief with seven days to Christmas, on Dec 18, 1965, after employees of an upmarket supermarket decided to end a three-day strike.
Some 200 workers of Fitzpatrick's supermarket in Orchard Road called off the strike after reaching a settlement at the Labour Ministry over a wage dispute. At 1pm, half an hour after the strike ended, shoppers made a rush for the supermarket.
The workers had gone on strike as a result of a wage talks deadlock with the management.
The strike was announced earlier by Mr Michael Selvanayagam, general secretary of the Food, Drinks and Allied Workers Union, to which the workers belonged.
In a circular, he had called the management's wage offers "insulting" and said no self-respecting union would negotiate on this basis.
Fitzpatrick's, which officially opened here in 1958, used to be where The Paragon mall now stands before its building was torn down in the 1980s.