"HOPEFUL."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 150, 26 June 1937, Page 10

"HOPEFUL."

SETTLEMENT NEARER.

UNION OFFICIAL'S „ VIEW.

PICKETING ABANDONED.

"The position is hopeful," stated the .-•■cretary of the Auckland Drivers' Union, Mr. L. G. Matthews, shortly after one o'clock this afternoon, when an adjournment was taken in the negotiations which aro proceeding between employers and employees' representatives in connection with the petrol drivers' dispute. Mr. Matthews said that a certain proposition which he was unable to disclose at the moment had ! con submitted during discussions with I'm conciliation commissioner, Mr. R. E. Trice, and it would he placed before the men during the luncheon interval. Picketing Abandoned. It wns further disclosed that picketing would be abandoned meantime, and that the forty men involved in the dispute would assemble at the conciliation commissioner's rooms in the Chief Post IviTiec, when the discussions between the ;>:irtics resumed at 2.30 p.m. It is stated that during*,the. discussions the men's representatives adhered tn their suggestion that they should icturn to work on the 40-hour week oasis, subject to any adjustments being iiiade nt a later date if such a course were dictated by the Arbitration Court, whereas the employers- demanded that work he resumed under existing conditions, and that the dispute he settled « liy constitutional means.

A representative of the employers explained that a Dominion application , for an interpretation of the hours clnuse in the award, and the question of meal time while drivers were on the road, had been before the Arbitration Court for several months, and the matter would come before the Court in Christchurch on July 3. Acting-Prime Minister's Arrival. There is a possibility of the acting",ime Minister, the Hon. P. Fraser, intervening in the dispute unless it is -ettled before he arrives from Wellington by aeroplune this afternoon. During discussions- last evening between Mr.'Price and representatives of LJio men and of the Auckland branch i-f the Alliance of Labour and the Trades Mid Labour Council (the two organisainns which are to merge into a district i ouncil of the Federation of Labour) a telephone call was received from Mr. Fraser, and it is believed that he sug- '■ esteel to-day's conference between the unrties in an endeavour to reach a settlement. Officials of the union intimated this -morning that Auckland provincial petrol wagon drivers had ceased work in sympathy with the men in Auckland, but on Ihe employers' side it was maintained 1 hat such was not the case, and that country men were still working to-day. The union, in the meantime, has not taken the steps which it proposed to take in enlisting the support of railway men not to shift railway petrol wagons.