CARGO SABOTAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 212, 8 September 1938, Page 4

CARGO SABOTAGE.

MR. POISON'S] CHARGE.

WATERSIDERS' DENIAL.

« fountain pen stevedore."

(By Telegraph —Own Correspondent.)

NEW PLYMOUTH, this day

"Mr. W. J. Poison, M.P., may be a practical farmer and understand that business very well indeed, but his effort as a fountain-pen stevedore has been ail utter failure."

These were the words in which Mr. S. Flood, secretary of the Xew Plymouth Waterside Workers' Union, commented on statements made by Mr. Poison at an Inglewood meeting, allegiii" extensive sabotage or cargo by watersiders, and a great increase in the cost of handling cargo.

"The waterside workers at Xew Plymouth took very strong exception to Mr. Poison's statement that cargo is being sabotaged and destroyed by waterside workers." said Mr. Flood. Speaking for the port of Xew Plymouth he could say it had been the waterside workers' endeavours for a number of years to stow farmers' produce in a satisfactory manner and, in the case of butter and cheese, to see that no broken boxes or crates went into stow. Where one might be accidentally broken, it was set aside and mended.

"I am of the opinion," said Mr. Flood, "that Mr. Poison is trying to mislead the farmers by the statement he made, but the farmer has enough of the average commonsense to know that if his cargo arrived in England sabotaged or in a damaged condition, a report would be asked for by the Dairy Board and Meat Board at the port where the damage was alleged to have taken place."

So far there had been i»o inquiry at New Plymouth, he said, but the "Waterside workers had been complimented at various times by inspectors on the satisfactory manner in which cargo was stowed.

In regard to Mr. Poison's statements alleging an increase in the cost of working vessels, Mr. Flood said he did not know where Mr. Poison had obtained his figures, but they were such wild statements ami so far from fact that they were not worth replying to. "Unloading Slowed Down." At his meeting Mr. Poison said that the loading and unloading of ships definitely was being slowed down. At one time 1000 boxes of butter were hand]oil in a day and now the quantity had fallen to <>00. A full ton «>f meat used to be loaded in each sling. and at the present time wharf labourers handled only 12 hundred-freight to the sling. With grain it was formerly the practice to load 14 sacks into the sling, and to-day only six or eight sacks were a full sling. Labour costs of working vessels had risen sliarplv since snid Mr. Poison. In 193."i the cost was 22d per ton. in 193<i it was 2-VI and in 1937 30.9*1. For the first six months of 1938 it was 3»kl. and some ships had cost as much as 52.7 d a ton to unload—more than double the cost of two or three years ago. The sabotage and destruction of cargo had also increased, and now represented about £1,000,000 a year on produce going overseas.

"You can t bjanie that on the Labour Government," Y *a7tl an .interjector. K " Ye * I «»". I very largely put this down to the Labour Government. It did not exist before the Labour Government canie into power," retnrted Mr. Poison. In the last three years he alleged that sabotage had amounted to a tremendous sum.