AUSTRALIAN STRIKES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 57, 17 December 1945, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN STRIKES

MINERS AND SEAMEN TO RESUME

Steelworkers Still Hold Out

i * (N.Z. Press Association —Copyright.) - SYDNEY, December 16. The miners will return to work to-morrow morning. Aggregate meetings were held to-day, when 1482 men voted ih favour of returning and 1429 against. Steel workers at Port Kembla carried a motion that they would not resume work until the vaiveman (D. Parker) was reinstated. There were surprises early in the day, when, southern and western coal-pits voted to defy the recommendation, but results on the northern fields made the aggregate vote in favour of working. The meetings were all poorly attended and the total votes cast were only about half of the number cast on December 3, when the men first decided to go on strike. The executive of the Australasian Council of Trade Unions unanimously recortimended that the resumption of work by the steel strikers should be considered by a meeting of representatives of the 19 unions involved not later than next Sunday. This decision, reached at a conference of the A.C.T.U. and the striking unions, indicates a move to the Left by the A.C.T.U. It has strengthened the position of the ironworkers and implies that unless the Court grants re-registration, the steel-workers strike will continue. The Miners’ Central Council, with the approval of the A.C.T.U., has recommended to its members that no coal should be supplied from Broken Hill Proprietaiy and Australian Iron and Steel mines until the steel strike ends. This means that no coal will be mined for the steel-works, because a black ban is operating at all other pits.