POSITION IN AUSTRALIA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXIII, Issue 8726, 27 November 1913, Page 5

POSITION IN AUSTRALIA.

NEW ZEALAND DELEGATE IN SYDNEY.

CLERKS REFUSE TO HANDLE

CARGO.

PASSENGERS STRANDED.

SYDNEY, November 26.

A delegate from the New Zealand Seamen's Union arrived to-day, and conferred with the General Secretary of the Federated Seamen's Union of Australasia and Assistant-Secretary of

the Victorian Seamen's Union. The business was not divulged. „' . A special meeting .of the shipping clerks is to be held to-mght to con : sider the position of the clerks who are engaged discharging cargo trom the Union Company's steamers. The President of the Clerks Union states that .some members are very sore at being asked to handle cargo, and that some refused to do so, but he instructed them to continue pending the Union's decision on a line or action. It is reported that a number of the Orama's passengers, en route to New Zealand, are stranded owing to the dislocation of the steamer service. Though a number of them have money m the New Zealand banks, they provided themselves <with only sufficient ready cash, without reckoning on strike delays, to land them in New Zealand. Others are in still worse case, all their available funds being exhausted paying boai'd in Sydney. >