THE POSITION AT KIRIPAKA.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 87, 15 November 1912, Page 5

THE POSITION AT KIRIPAKA.

THE MEN'S VERSION. Mr. James. Rolfe, secretary of the Kiripaka Miners' Union, visited the "Advocate" office with a view to placing the position of the industrial' trouble at Kiripaka. before the public from the workers' point of view, and to dispute some of the statements attributed to Colonel Holgate, managing director of the Northern Coal Co., as appearing in an interview published in the "Auckland Star" of date October 31.

"In the first place," Mr. Rolfe remarked, "Colonel Holgate says that it is not a strike, and with this we agree, as it is a lock-out in the nature of victimisation. Colonel Holgate is made to say that it was by the request of the Federation of Labor. That is not a fact. It was by a unanimous vote, with two exceptions, of the members of the Kiripaka Union. Colonel Holgate further says that the directors closed down the Kiripaka mine and found, other employment for those men who continued at the mine when the others went out. I challenge Colonel Holgate to specify what work was found, apart from opening up and developing the new mine. Again, I will ask Colonel Holgate to contradict the statement that it is a fact that, the directors are attempting to work the old Ngunguru mine at Kiripaka by free labor, or any labor not belonging to the Kiripaka Miners' Union; and, further, that the manager has stated that he can get labor elsewhere. Every member of the Kiripaka Miners' Union is prepared to go to work, and if the interview in the 'Star' of October 14 is correct, wherein Colonel Holgate stated that the work at Kiripaka was being continued on his advice in consideration of tho married men with homes and families there, I would ask Colonel Holgate why those mon are not now at work; their wives, homes and families are still there?"