NGAHERE DREDGE DISPUTE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 December 1940, Page 2

NGAHERE DREDGE DISPUTE

ATTITUDE OF MEN. SUPPORTED BY UNION & COUNCIL (By Telegraph—Press Association.) GREYMOUTH, December 1. Opinions that the dismissal of 30 men from the Ngahere dredge last Monday constituted a lock-out were expressed at a large meeting of the Westland Gold Dredge Workers’ Union today, and the West Coast Trades and Labour Council yesterday, when the attitude of the men in demanding payment for time lost since the dredge closed was unanimously supported by both bodies.

Two hundred and thirty-four men attended the union meeting and decided to localise the dispute in the meantime, but to open voluntary subscription lists on all dredges to secure financial assistance for the men and their families. It was also decided that no members of the union accept employment on the Ngahere dredge till the matters in dispute were settled. The suggestion of Mr C. C. Davis, chairman, of directors of the company, that the Ngahere dredge was singled out for special treatment was emphatically denied by the union, which decided to make known the fact that the policy since 1938 had been to take annual and statutory holidays as they' fell due under the terms of the award unless a mutual arrangement between the company and the union was enterted into. The Trades and Labour Council decided to request the Minister of Labour, Mr Webb, to visit Greymouth immediately to confer with the council and union.

SETTLEMENT ATTEMPTS FAIL. MEN’S CONDITIONS. GREYMOUTH, December 1. A resolution that a levy of Is in the £ be made on all members of the Westland Dredge Workers’ Union was passed at a special meeting of the union in Greymouth today. The levy will be paid to the 30 employees of the Ngahere gold dredge, which ceased operations due to a dispute having risen on the King’s Birthday on Monday last, when the men failed to report for work and were summarily dismissed by Ngahere Gold Dredging Ltd. Several attempts to effect a settlement have failed and prospects of ending the dispute are now less likely than earlier in the week. The employees, it is understood, will go back only on their own terms. None of the other gold dredges operating-on the West Coast have been affected, and they will continue to operate as usual. Suggestions that work on the dredge should resume pending an investigation by a tribunal into the position with regard to the holiday have come to nought because the men have set it clown as a condition that they should receive payment for time lost by the dispute before resuming, and the company has agreed to make payment only in the event of the tribunal deciding that the men are in the right.