P.W.D. CONDITIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 114, 15 May 1936, Page 3

P.W.D. CONDITIONS.

MINISTER'S POWERS. MAY CANCEL AGREEMENT. PROCEDURE FOR DISPUTES. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. The new agreement between the Minister of Public Works and the New Zealand Workers' Union, becomes effective on June 1, and is for three years, but the Minister retains the right, in the event of any of its terms being violated, to cancel it in whole or in part, either in respect of a particular locality or of the whole Dominion, after calling upon the parties to show cause why this should not be done. TLe Minister is also entitled to alter the rates of pay at any time if the Government should find it is necessary. "Since accepting the portfolio of Public Works," said the Minister, the Hon. R. Semple, in the course of his statement to the House of Representatives last night, "I have received numerout complaints and requests from individual workmen and committees of workmen. The new agreement makes special provision for the procedure to be adopted in making requests or settling disputes. "The New Zealand Workers' Union is to appoint a representative on every work, and all complaints or requests by workmen are to be made through him to the engineer or other officer in charge of the work. If the local engineer and the union representative are unable to arrive at a settlement, each of them is to forward a separate statement to the district engineer. If the district engineer is unable to effect a settlement, the'dispute is to be referred to the head offices of the Public Works Department and of the New Zealand Workers' Union. "Men are not to stop work while a dispute is under consideration either locally or by the head offices of the Department and the union, or by the Minister of Public Works. This will explain my stipulation that all workmen on construction works must belong to this one union."