SETTLED AT LAST

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3161, 13 August 1917, Page 6

SETTLED AT LAST

THE GAS WORKERS' TROUBLE

ALL HANDS START THIS MORNING

It -will be learned with great satisfaction that tho gas workers' trouble at Miramar has been settled at last, and that the whole of tho seventeen men who censed work a month ago are to recommence work this morning. On Friday the men held a meeting, when it was practically decided to go back, provided the company would take the whole of the men on again, leaving the matter of conditions ami pay lo be adjudicated upon by a tribunal to be mutually agreed upon by the men and the company. Tho men were mot by Mr. W. H. Hagger (Conciliation Commissioner) lato on Saturday afternoon, when they signified their preparedness to return to work on Holiday, provisionally on all hands being taken back. The matter was referred to the company's representatives, who agreed to the proposal, so as far as anyone can foresee tho trouble has been satisfactorily settled. That being the case it is expected that the coal-workers will com-' mence this morning to discharge the coal stocks the Wellington Gas Company holds in hulks in Wellington. The company has two full loads of coal (brought from the coast by the Ivittawn), and these will bo at once tranferred to the company's yard over the Miramar Wharf.

UNIONISTS PROTEST. A nicotine held yesterday by unionists to 'discuss the gas trouble passed tho following resolutions That this meeting calls public attention to the unfairness of the Government ill taking tho side of the Wellington Gas Company in an industrial dispute; in our opinion the function of Government in c uch _ circumstances is to act as mediator, if required, and to preserve order. To enact drastic regulations during the currency of a dispute was a reprehensible act of tyranny, calculated to create, rather than minimise, industrial discontent. "That tho attention of citizens be called to the action of the Wellington City Co.uncil in interfering in the Gas Company's dispute by approaching the Government to declare gas work an essential industrv, sncli interference being calculated to involve the city in industrial turmoil. This_ action is tho more surprising when, it* is remembered that it was taken on behalf of a company that is successfully competing against a municipal undertaking."' Mr. J. Head was in the chair.