WATERSIDERS’ COMPLAINT

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21219, 16 September 1940, Page 9

WATERSIDERS’ COMPLAINT

NO STUDY OF AGREEMENT NEW SYSTEM IN WELLINGTON (By Telegraph.—Press Association) WELLINGTON, Sunday Replying to a charge of inconsistency by the chairman of the Waterfront Control Commission, Mr R. E. Price, Mr T. N. Warren, on behalf of the Wellington branch of the Watersiders’ Federation, states:— “The union claims that all its members who assist in the work are entitled to participate in any monetary benefits that accrue from a speed-up effort. This surely cannot be construed into a complaint that the blessings of the contract do not apply to all waterside workers. It is merely the just claim of men who are compelled to work under this system. “After the system had been in operation for some three months, we received at the urgent request of the union what Mr Price terms a copy of the agreement. Does Mr Price imagine that the union accepts those brief notes as an agreement on a matter of such vital importance? “The union claims that as a party to the contract the full facts of the agreement should be placed before it for amendment or rejection, and they protest against arbitrary acceptance of the present so-called cooperative contract. The decision reached was unanimously endorsed by 700 members at a meeting.”