AGAINST UNIONISM

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 245, 29 July 1936, Page 2

AGAINST UNIONISM

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS.

CHRISTCHURCH COMPROMISE rf*er Press Association.! CHRISTCHURCH, July 15. In enrolling new members under the compulsory unionism provisions of the new law, union secretaries have met an obstacle in the conscientious objector. Adherents of the Seventh Day Adventist, Plymouth Brethren and Christadelphian sects have approached union secretaries stating their inability to combine union membership with the performance of certain duties dictated by their conscience. With the object of devising means of meeting the wishes of these objectors, at the same time complying with the law, a conference was held between Pastor C. E. Bird (Seventh Day Adventist) and Mr E. C. Sutcililfe (secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners). Pastor Bird’s case was that members of his own and certain other groups could not subscribe to any militant purpose such as was implied in the membership of a trade union. They did not object to the payment of dues but could not pay money which might be devoted to political or militant purposes. In the discussion a compromise was agreed upon. In effect it was agreed that a conscientious objector should be issued with a union card inscribed in the comer “conscientious objector” and that the moneys received from dues paid by such members should be used by the union in furtherance of the technical education of apprentices. The compromise was considered by a meeting of the executive of the union to-night, and the executive rejected it, the reason being, “if this union concedes the position desired, there is no foretelling where conscientious objections will end, because opportunities of evading the law would be given which are undesirable from the union standpoint.”

Resolutions passed suggested the alteration of the law rather than the evasion of it.