REDUCED GRADING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 46, 23 February 1934, Page 9

REDUCED GRADING.

TRAMWAYMEN'S APPEALS. JOINED DURING STRIKE. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, Thursday. . One of tlie 23 appeals lodged by the employees of the Tramways Board has been heard by the Tramway Appeal Board, the case of Leo Scrimshaw. Originally 29 appeals were lodged, but six were withdrawn. Decision on today's hearing was reserved, and the other 22 appeals were adjourned sine die. The appellants are all men who joined the service at the time of the strike in May, 1932, or who, having refused to go on strike, were given more important duties and raised in grade and pay. They are appealing against reductions in trading made by the new board, which has a Labour majority, in order to absorb a number of men who were not re-employed after the strike by the board then in office. Appeals ordinarily are supported by the union, but in this case the union does not support them. The appellant, Scrimshaw, said in evidence that he had not had tramway experience before the strike. After the election of the new board he had been disrated from the position of motorman to assistant conductor. For the Tramways Board, it was argued that the Appeal Board had no jurisdiction. Right of appeal, it was suggested, was available only in the case of punishment, and the disrating had not been done by way of punishment. John Kendrick Archer, chairman of the Tramways Board, made a statement on behalf of the board to counsel for' appellants. He said he had never stated that the volunteers must go, whether i their appeals were successful or licnt. (