Security guards to meet

Press, 1 July 1983, Page 5

Security guards to meet

The Canterbury Cleaners’ Union has called a meeting on July 12 for its members in the contract security guard industry. The meeting has been called to discuss the wage freeze and other matters.

It was called after a member of the union, who is a security guard, complained to the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon, that he and some colleagues had not been told of a meeting at which other members of the union had decided to strike for one day a month in support of a $2O a week pay rise. Mr Muldoon ordered the Labour Department to in-

vestigate the matter. Mr Gavin Cumming, secretary of the union, said the meeting on July 12 had been called at the security guards’ request. “The meeting is to go over what they want to go over, plus the wage freeze,” said Mr Cumming.

He said he did not know if the guards would vote on the one-day-a-month strike. About 55 guards held an unofficial meeting of their own last week at which they rejected the first such strike last Friday. In Wellington, Mr R. A. Stockdill, the Labour Department’s assistant director of industrial relations, said that he had received a

report from the department’s Christchurch office on the inquiry ordered by the Prime Minister.

“There has, I understand, been a further development down there in the last day or two and I have asked our people to make some further inquiries,” said Mr Stockdill. He confirmed that the “further development” was a letter sent by the union’s solicitors to Mr Bob House, the man whose letter to Mr Muldoon started the fuss, asking him to withdraw certain allegations they say he made.

The solicitors’ letter also asks Mr House to authorise the union to make such use

of the signed retraction as it sees fit, and says that if it is not received by today a defamation action will be started against him by the union and its officials. Mr House said yesterday he had not made the retraction. He had instead sent a copy of the solicitors’ letter to Mr Muldoon for his opinion. Mr Cumming said that the union’s solicitors had advised him not to comment. Asked if the dispute between the union and one of its members might not better be settled by a meeting between them rather than litigation, Mr Cumming said, “I hope the whole matter will be resolved.”