ISLANDERS AS CREW

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 352, 12 May 1928, Page 13

ISLANDERS AS CREW

MANNING OF MAUI POMARE PROTEST FROM SEAMEN (From Our Resident Reporter.) WELLINGTON, To-day. The new Government vessel Maui Pomare is to be manned by European officers and an entirely native crew. This decision has called forth a protest from the Seamen’s Union. A deputation from the Wellington Seamen’s Union waited on the Minister in charge of the Cook Islands Department, Sir Maui Pomare to-day. Sir Maui indicated that he was in a position to man the ship from captain to cabin boy with properly qualified natives. Mr. F. P. Walsh, president, and Mr. F. Newfield, secretary, of the Seamen’s Union, pointed out that many hundreds of New Zealand seamen were ashore at present unemployed and that the manning of the new ship with them would reduce the number of unemployed at least to the extent of 30.

If the decision to man the vessel with an Island crew were persisted in they asked that the wages, hours and conditions generally should be. the same as those in the agreement under which the Hew Zealand seamen worked and that the members of the crew should be allowed to join the Seamen’s Union. The Minister said he could hold out no hope of altering the decision, which was arrived at after careful consideration by himself and his department. In regard to wages and other conditions, he indicated that the terms of the industrial agreement in force in New Zealand could not apply to the Maui Pomare. The crew were to be classified as public servants and would therefore be placed outside the industrial agreement. The Maui Pomare is due at Apia on Monday and is expected to reach Wellington toward the end of the present month.