WANTED-FREE LABOUR

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 587, 13 February 1929, Page 9

WANTED-FREE LABOUR

TIMBER MERCHANTS ADVERTISE

STRIKE MAY COLLAPSE (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) Reed. 11.5 a.m. SIDNEY, To-day. The Timber Merchants’ Asosciation advertised this morning for free labour for timber mills in the metropolitan area. Preference, wherever possible, will be given to former employees. It is expected that this development will lead to an extension of the strike, and if ilie appeal is successful will inevitably hasten its collapse. The Australian Council of Trades Unions, sitting in Melbourne to-day, replied to the telegrams received from the Federal Attorney-General, Mr. J. G. Latham, appealing for peace in the timber industry. The reply, which disclosed- an uncompromising attitude toward the Federal Arbitration Court, stated: The present industrial turmoil is the result of your Government’s attack on the workers’ conditions. Your Government can cure the position as easily as it caused it by calling off attacks on the workers’ standards of living and on the vital 44-hour week principle. Mr. Latham replied: My Government declines to accept the suggestion that the decisions of the Arbitration Court are to be accepted by the unions only when they are in their favour. The trades unions themselves joined in procuring the submission of the 44hour week question to the Court. I greatly regret that you can give no better response to my appeal than fo repeat dsicredited political catchwords. An application by the Federal Carters’ and Drivers’ Union to withdraw its claims from the Arbitration Court was dismissed to-day by Air. Justice Lukin. He said no union had the right to exercise an option to withdraw its claims from the Court without the consent of the respondents.