A DELIBERATE TRAP.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 199, 11 January 1913, Page 5

A DELIBERATE TRAP.

THE SLAUGHTERMEN'S TROUBLE.' ■

MB. REARDO\'S-x\IiT>EGATIONS.

By Telegranh—Prfss,, Association. Wellington,' Last Night. "A deliberate attempt to trap ng." ■ This i* how the tsecretary'of the Slaughtermen's Federation, Mr. M. J. Reardon, regards the line of action pursued by the Department of Labor in connection with • the men's move to cancel their registration under the Arbitration Act. The six weeks' notice which is required by law expired on Thursday, and if all had bee* well the formal notification of cancella-

tion should have appeared in the Gazett*. > That night no intimation that all was otherwise than well reached Mr. Reardon, but when he looked for the Gazette announcement he could not find it. It was not there. "They have got us in a cleft stick just at present," he admit- . ted to a pressman A 3-day *n discussing . the position which had arisen. If the cancellation is not grunted before the present agreement between the men and the companies expires, the men who knock off work in pursuance of the no-

tice given to the companies' last Mon- ' day will render themselves liable to the ]" full penalties of the Arbitration Acta* strikers. The agreement expires on Friday, the 17th inst., and the Gazette ■ will be published fhe evening before, while the men's notice to the companies - runs out on the following Monday morninir. Thus the Federation has no time tn in "-!••'liinsr. "Our sreat grievance," Mid Mr. Reardon, "is that we have not had a single line or word from the Department to indicate that it was not satisfied, but now that the six week* are. up and we expected to get our cancellation the Department says that it has not been convinced that a majority of ' the men in the Union favour cancellation. I venture the opinion that the Department simplv sat tight and did nothing until I challenged the officials this morning, after I had ascertained that the notices were not in the Gazette." It is submitted bv Mr. Reardon that by the Department's own notice in the Gazette of November 28th. thfr Unions were all entitled to cancellation, because so' far as they knew no cause had been shown whv it should not be granted. If the Department felt that they had not given sufficient proof of desire for cancellation the proper time • to make the inquiries was during the ' ■ * six weeks' period, not when it was about ■ to elapse. "If the Department had. in- '■ ■ timated to me seven days ago that they - were not satisfied," Mr. Reardon said,. "within three days I would have pro- ■ duced the signatures of every man engaged in export slaughtering in the Wellington industrial district. At the present time, as it was, I sent the Department some six weeks ago signatures of . all the men then engaged in our district who desired cancellation. Now I have only six days in whicli to get the signatures of between 800 and 900 men. scattered from Auckland to Invercargill. It is simply impossible for me to do it. If the cancellation is not notified in the

next Gazette it cannot appear before the agreement expires, and we can be pTe- . vented from cancelling altogether. I discovered this thing by a mere acci- / dent," he went on to say, "and obviously men like the secretaries of the Can-

terbury and Poverty Bay Unions, who' are working slaughtermen, would not le in a position to discover it at all. Hart it not been.noticed by me we would simply have walked into an ambush, for the Department gave us no warning at all. I am certain that if I hadn't seen the Gazette and gone to the Depart' ment to demand an explanation they would have sat tight'and let iw put our necks into the trap. All along the slaughtermen have been pretty badly treated under the Arbitration Act. After the strike of 1907 the Arbitration Court followed them right round New Zealand, and fined 266 of them £5 each. This penalty is over five times greater than the average penalty imposed on other workers for breaches of the Act. It }» aliso nearly double the average fine' imposed on employers for breaches. The action, or rather inaction, of the Department now is calculated to involve between 800 and 900 men in penalties up to x £lo apiece, in view of the fact that for their first offence thev were "fined £5. It is safe to assume that the penalty will be increased.if they br|ak,*the law on thie occasion. We have endeavoured to stick to the law so far, and have, on this occasion, done nothing but what the law enables any union to do," The chief clerk in the Labor Department, who was spoken to by the reporter in the absence of the Secretary of Labor, would only say that the Department in every case before it filially cancels a registration must be satisfied that the cancellation is desired by a majority of members of the applying union. The Department was now making enquiries to satisfy itself on this point, and if any cause should .appear why cancellation ' should be refused the unipn would be notified at once. He honed that the enquiries would be completed in two or three days, ample timp'to notifv .the union and sufficient to Gazette the cancellation if it is granted.