STRIKES, SEQUEL

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 56, 7 March 1929, Page 7

STRIKES , SEQUEL

SHIPPING SUFFERS. Profits Drop £18,543 On Year's Workings. HUDDART PARKER ACCOUNTS. (Australian and X.Z. Press Association.) (deceived 11,30 a.m.) SYDNEY, this day. The accounts of Huddart Parker, Ltd., which have just been issued, disclose that the profits fell from £143,000, in 1927, to £ 124,457, in 1925. This was owing tc the cooks' and waterside strikes and the stagnation of the coal industry in which the company is interested. The dividend has been reduced from fourteen to ten per cent and the preference dividend is now six per cent. The dividends absorb £105,000. ACTS OF VIOLENCE. Timbermen Make Attacks On Free Labour. ACCOUNTANT FIRES. (Received 21.30 a.m.) SYDNEY, this day. Acts of violence on the part of striking timber workers are reported. Seven volunteer workers were severely handled by strikers when they were returning to their homes in Sydney last evening. The attackers escaped in a car. The employers have offered a reward of £50 for information which will lead to the conviction of the offenders. A message from Melbourne says eight strikers in three motor cars raided the timber mill at Torronga yesterday. They were armed w-ith. bricks, pieces of timber and road metal. The strikers broke all the windows in the mill. The accountant, in self-defence, fired four shots from a revolver at the raiders, one of whom was wounded. His companions assisted the injured man to one of the motor cars and the party decamped. The strikers' tactics took a sensational turn when twenty unionists broke m on a brawl between two men. They carried one to the roadway and flung him in front of a two-horse lorry travelling at a fast pace. The man missed being trampled on by inches. He bad previously shattered the windows of the union building. PAYING OFF. BLACK OUTLOOK FOR MEN. (Received 11.30 a.m.) NEWCASTLE, this day. Over 100 railway employees engaged in handling coal have been instructed to begin their annual holidays forthwith. If by the time the holidays finish the trouble is not over the men are likely to be faced with unemployment. A number of coke oven and blast furnace hands at Broken Hill Proprietary works at Newcastle may be paid off at the end of the week. Food relief for distressed miners is now being organised.