P. & O. COLOURED CREWS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 794, 18 April 1910, Page 6

P. & O. COLOURED CREWS.

"-'.'■ LABOUR ATTITUDE. - (?y 'Telephone.—Special Correspondents, -.1';. ■ Auckland April; 17; ■ The agitation by the Seamen's Union for united action by New Zealand and Australia against the P. and- 0. Cornpan jv for the use of coloured labour on their steamers.has'caused some coaster-: nation in local business circles. Against the. views, expressed by members of the Seamen's Union,. a leading shipping authority who was seen by a "Herald" representative, said that the Lascars on the P. and 0. liners did not come into competition with white labourers ui the way the union appeared to believe, be> cause they worked no cargo in anj shape or form when they arrive; here, -and while at sea the Asiatic section of the crew replace a very .small number of European Further, tho Lascars are not engaged in the same manner as white seamen. The method pur-. sued! is that a certain number of Sifaugs (or quartermasters) are engaged' by the company, and the remainder of the coloured crew are practically indein- - tured under the Sirangs, so that it is incorreat to say they are paid, about. 255. per month. ■ Mr. E; Tregear, .'secretary . of the, "Labour -Department,' when seen, said the question of coloured labour was'the origin of - the - last-' great industrial trouble which affected New Zealand, viz., the maritime strike of 1890. Although this strike did not arise in Ne"iv Zealand,- it was in.oonsequence of the intense hostility of the. Australian workers to visiting ships trading'with their "coloured crews, in.. Australian ; waters that a sympathetic strike' took p!aco_ in New Zealand; therefore, if the "question arose now or soon, its seriousness in the eyes of organised labour might be calculated-, by the resentment it caused twenty years ago.