WELLINGTON TRAMS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 81, 3 April 1908, Page 4

WELLINGTON TRAMS.

EMPLOYEES DISSATISFIED,

.(By, Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, this day.

At a meeting of members of the Wellington Tramways Union, held on Sunday last, to consider the counter proposals of the corporation in reply to claims of the union, considerable dissatisfaction was expressed by the employees, and the prospect of a mutually satisfactory arrangement is considered to be still somewhat dim. The counter proposals, it was urged, left the wages and overtime conditions as at present, and objection is taken to the deletion of clerks, timekeepers, and dispatchers from the claims. '

The secretary of the Tramways Union Mr. W. T. Young, in reply to questions' informed a Press reporter that this would mean the exclusion of those men from any agreement that the union might enter into. The union asked that firemen, greasers, and trimmers at the pc-wer station should be allowed to <r 0 on holiday leave during their night shut week, and the chief engineer of the power station had said this was practicable yet the corporation refused to grant it! The corporation proposals, Mr. Younff considers, are to all intents and purposes inferior to the conditions under which the men have worked for the past two years. The union also asked that an appeal board should be set up, to consist of one union representative, one representative of the corporation, and an independent chairman selected By the representative members, to deal with all case 3 of suspension, disrating, and dismissal. The corporation had struck out the word "disrating," and had suggested that the tramways committee should act as an appeal board.

Another point upon which the employees were- dissatisfied was the question, of shortages and overs. Sometimes the were a shilling or 'even more short. No- receipt was given, and the. cash and coupons were sent alon»' to the -Newtown office and checked, and a • few days later a notice might come alon<» that a certain conductor was s o much short in paying in on such-and-such a date. It was pointed out that this entailed a great hardship, and one case was instanced in which a conductor debited with 16/ for shortages spent two hours in investigating the matter, with the result that it was found that an errorhad occurred in the Newtown office, and that the conductor was not v a penny short. To meet such cases the union asked that each conductor should have a box with a lock and key, in which to keen each set of tickets issued by him until the whole set was disposed of. This, it was stated, had been agreed to' by the corporation some time ago, but had not yet been put into operation.