STRIKE CONTINUES

Hokitika Guardian, 2 April 1932, Page 5

STRIKE CONTINUES

HITNTLY RELIEF

CAMP WORKERS NOT INVOLVED.

(By Telegraph —Per Press Association)

AUCKLAND, April 1

The relief workers on strike at Huntly again declined to accept work to-day. The sum of £l4O, which was the Unemployment- Board’s allocation for relief work wages in Huntly this week, has been returned to Wellington as being unclaimed.

Work will be again offered to the men on Monday. ,

The strikers are confined to the men who were employed on relief works in the town, numbering about 160. Those men who are in the camps, outside the town, are not affected. The town strikers are chiefly composed of the men who have been dismissed from the mines, and who have mow been offered- relief work in making a recreation area. The point at issue with the strikers, however, bears principally on work which has been offered- on the railway. Eight men were wanted for clearing away blackberry niht gorse along the railway line between Hu fitly and Taupiri. This work has been declaiod "black)” the strikers claiming that) the relief workers are being asked to perform these duties at n rate of only 12s a day for two and a-half days a week which duties were formerly done by the railway surfacemen at the rate of £3 17s 6d per week. The situation was quiet in Huntly to-day.

Ten men arrived there from Hamilton during the morning on their way to an Unemployment Camp nine miles away. They proceeded to the work unmolested.

A deputation visited, a large numher of the retail’ ’shopkeepers asking for contributions to th© fund for the support of the. strikers. They explained the, reason for the strike. Numbers of the shopkeepers donated money to the fund, and other shopkeepers offered food supplies to the men.