Splendid Waterfront Solidarity!

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 10, 1 November 1913, Page 1

Splendid Waterfront Solidarity!

1,300 WHARFIES OUT AT AUCKLAND.

SEAMEN’S SOLIDARITY. October 29

The news items'in the daily papers, more or less reliable if read shrewdly, have already informed readers, better than our limited space permits, of the big strikes in Huntly, Wellington, Auckland, and elsewhere.

The Wellington Watersiders, 1,500 strong, have been out a week. The employers are desperately trying to get scabs, and the strikers are vigorously picketing* It is rumoured that farmers are being organised to scab on the Wellington wharves.

Tuesday, October 28th, three hundred Auckland coal lumpers were called out at mid-day on account of the Huntly strike. Later the call came for all the Watersiders to cease work, and was immediately responded to. The following morning a big meeting of Watersiders was held in the Trades Hall, and a resolution, expressing unswerving loyalty to the Federation, and all fel-low-workers engaged in the fight, was carried enthusiastically and without dissent.

The seamen of the Tofua, just in with a lot of fruit from Fiji, refused to handle cargo. An attempt was made, later, to unload cargo by some TT.S.S. Co.’s foremen, but was frustrated by Watersiders.

STRONG SYMPTOMS OF GENERAL SYMPATHETIC STRIKE

Wellington Watersiders Militant

AUCKLAND SOLID BEHIND THEM

HUNTLY MINERS’ REVOLT.

500 OUT. A strike of coalminers is on at Huntly, a town 65 miles south of Auckland, on the Main Trunk. On October 6th sixteen men were given notice. Ho reasons were given. A general meeting of the miners was held, and a deputation appointed to meet the directors and try to get the notices withdrawn. The directors refused to meet them.

A Second attempt was made. The company’s representatives said they were following precedents laid down in former years : reducing the number of employees owing to warm weather approaching. (The practice in Huntly, as in other N.Z. coal mines, has been to work short time and retain employees during slack periods.—Ed.)

The fact that 14 fresh men were put on gives the lie to the company’s statement. The victimised men were deliberately picked out

because of active interest in union' affairs. Three were members of the Union Executive, another was check inspector. Others were discharged because of their opposition to the formation (by 15 men) of a bogus union in opposition to the wishes of 500 men. The statement made to the daily press by Alison, the chairman of the company, to the effect that “ eleven of the men have been employed by the company for periods only of from one to 15 months” is a lie. Most of them were there for years.

The statements made by the company regarding necessary retrenchment ” are deliberate lies. They have discharged men wutk sections and houses and taken on newcomers.

The Strike Committee has issued a leaflet stating the facts of the strike and asking workers to keep away from Huntly.