CARGO PILLAGE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 119, 22 May 1942, Page 3

CARGO PILLAGE

COSTING £200,000 AUSTRALIAN ALLEGATION (0.C.) SYDNEY, May 20. Following the fining last Friday of a large batch of waterside workers for cargo pillaging, shipowners have been making grave allegations as to the extent of the practice. They claim that throughout Australia it is costing them jome £200.000, of which the port of Sydney accounts for about half. The rate has gone up here from Id per ton in 1938 to 3/4 now. And it must be remembered that in most cases claims for pillage are cut down before they are finally settled by the shipping companies. The companies say that in Sydney they employ 200 watchmen whose wages cost them £1800 a week, but they say the watchmen cannot stop pillaging because they are eitherbribed or frightened by threats or actual assaults into looking the other way. The owners suggest that men convicted a certain number of times of pillaging should not be allowed to work on the wharves.

The waterside workers say that much of the pillaging is done at the point of shipment and that, of the local pillaging, much of it is done by carriers and other workers besides themselves. They say that to take away the living of a man who has been fined by a court for pillaging would be to punish him twice.

Apparently there are various nefarious ways of getting away with pillaged goods. A case may be dropped so that- it breaks open, and a man then lounges around "on duty" while another man broaches it. A man may put on two or three pillaged shirts and then put his own on over the others and walk off the wharf. Men, it is said, have even got away with suits by getting some of the dust and stains of the hold on them and then putting them on, leaving their worn-out suits behind. Three dozen silk stockings have been packed into a thermos flask from which the glass container had been removed.

One company recently had pillage claims totalling £5000 on a 3500-ton cargo. Among the missing articles were a case of razors valued at £215. perfumery £172, cutlery £151, 1001b of tobacco, 17,000 cigarettes, hundreds of dozens of women's gloves, 2000 fountain pens, gin. gramophone needles, toys, surgical dressings and medicines.