OFFICIAL CHECK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 68, 22 March 1937, Page 3

OFFICIAL CHECK.

WATERSIDERS , PAY.

IDENTIFICATION DEMANDED.

NON-UNION MEN SUSPECT.

When non-union casual workers on the Auckland waterfront lined up this morning at the Port Building to receive the back pay due to them under the new agreement between the employers and the watersiders, officers of the Unemployment Bureau were standing alongside the windows through which the cash conies, and they asked for each man's lew book.

This "check over" was the result of persistent rumours that many of the "seagulls," as non-union waterside workers are called, had been drawing sustenance while earning big wages on the wharves, the port having been so busy in recent months that the 1350 union men were insufficient to cope with it. It was alleged that some men had assumed false names when they offered themselves for employment on the wharf. The new agreement between the watersiders and the employers applies to the non-unionists, just "as much as members of the union. It came into force at the end of last month, making substantial increases in wages, particularly in the rates payable to men handling "dirty" cargoes, such as sulphur, guano and phosphate, but a clause in the new agreement provided that the increased rates should be retrospective to October 1, and that all work done since that date, whether by union labour or by "seagulls." should be paid at the new rates.. The union members received their back pay last Thursday with their ordinary week's pay, and the "seagulls" also received their week's pay on Thursday, but their back pay was not obtainable until this morning.

Guilty Consciences?

It has been known on the waterfront for several days past that when the non-union men came to draw their back pay, they would have to identify themselves by producing their levy books, and that officers of the Labour Bureau would be there to check them. There must have been some guilty consciences among those entitled to draw their back pay to-day, for at mid-day, after an hour and a half of paying out, it was reported that between £400 and £500 remained unclaimed. Some of this money would, of course, .be • claimed later by men who were working, but there was a etrong suspicion that a considerable proportion of it was due to men who dared not face the officers of the Labour Bureau. A young Maori in the queue remarked that many of hie people were missing. Names, he remarked, meant less to the Maori than they did to the pakeha, as. it was quite customary for a Maori to change his name, adopting that of a relative whom he liked or that of someone who had been particularly good to him. It was no more than a traditional compliment, but might be misunderstood by the Government officers. Gambling on Wharves. The amount distributed amongst the Auckland waterside workers on Thursday and to-tlay amounted to close on £25,000, wages and back pay together. Some of it quickly changed hands over crown and anchor boards, and in twoup, cards and other forms of gambling, the increases of which, in recent months, have given considerable worry to the police, employers and the officials of the union. Union officials state, however, that most of the gambling is done among the non-union workers who stand about on the wharves waiting to be engaged. Among them, the union officials state, gambling is sometimes heavy, but among the union workers, who. admittedly, often play cards in their lunch hour for sjnall stakes, there is n ]<\r:'ii proportion of steady, hard-wokin-r family men who will play only for npftii:'ib!e stakes and discourse high <t.»!;es in the gangs with which they work. It was pointed out that the score or so of men who were apprehended by the police in the lust raid on a gambling "school" <>n the waterfront, only two were members of the Auckland Waterside Workers' Union. The others called themselves waterside workers, but were non-union men. There was more than a suspicion that certain men, not members of the union, were trying to make a living cut of gambling on the waterfront. The union would be very glad to see such men put out of harm's way as their activities brought discredit on the whole of the watersiders.