SECRET VOTE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 283, 30 November 1938, Page 12

SECRET VOTE.

4 RESUMPTION ISSUE. WESTFIELD WORKERS. BALLOT EARLY TO-MORROW. new application to court. The 800 idle freezing workers at Westfield will hold a secret ballot to-morrow morning to decide whether or not they ' will return to work. This was the decision reached, this morning at a further mass meeting of the workers, who discussed the failure of yesterday's conferences'to bring about a settlement of the dispute. The ballot will be held at the Trades Hall between 8 and 9 o'clock in the morning. Officials of the Auckland Abattoir Assistants and Freezing Works Employees" Union, of which the r.ieu and women involved are members, said to-day that if the vote favoured a return to work the workers would resume only under protest. They would not go back to their jobs until the following day. Meanwhile, immediate steps are expected to be taken to refer the disputed clause in their award to the Arbitration Court again in the way of .in appeal against the interpretation issued on Monday by Mr. J. A. Gilmour, S.M. Contentions of Men. This clause is that which says that as from October 1 last not more than .'55 j workers shall be employed on any chain, and the question which the men wish - to have decided is whether it refers to : the so-called ring system in operation at Westlield, which they say is essen--1 tially a chain system. 1 The men hold that the Arbitration ■ Court, when it iseued the award last • January, intended the clause to apply ' to West field. During the award hearing they had asked for some restriction ' on the number of men engaged on the ' chain, their complaint being that some employers, to serve their own ends, had unduly restricted the earning power of the chain slaughtermen by overloading . the chain with surplus labour. When the Westfield Freezing Company allegedly made no move after October 1 to comply with the restriction clause, a ruling was sought from Mr. Gilmour. The magistrate said that having regard % to all revelant considerations, which included the company's past compliance with certain clauses in the award relating to the chain system, he had come to the conclusion, not without doubt, that the award was defective in that 1 provision was not made for some limitation of the number of workers employed on the system of slaughtering in operation at the Westfield works. This does not .satisfy the men. who - want a more definite ruling, although they realise that the industrial magistrate may not have been given the power to correct whatever defect he found. Remedying the Defect. For this latter reason, said the secretary of the union. Mr. W. E. Sill, this morning, it was possible that "when the matter was brought before the Court again the union would make application to have the defect, if it existed, | j remedied—an act which the Court had . power to make.

Because the matter was to be brought before the Court again at the earliest possible moment. Mr. Sill, who is still confined to bed through an illness which has kept him out of the present dispute, preferred not to make any detailed comment on the men s ease. He said, howe\er, that the mens grievance was not only the result of Mr. Gilmoitrs decision, but was owing also to the fact of their inability, because of the pressure of work on the Arbitration Court, to have the matter relieved within a reasonable time. It has been difficult to arrange for the application to be heard as early as it was, and now the possibility had to be faced that the killing season would be practically over before the question was finally settled. In a statement issued after yesterday's conference had failed to bring about a settlement, the management of the company made the point that the ring was three times the length of a chain, and in other countries was considered, from the point of view of convenience to the worker and. al.so mechanically, an advance on the chain or any other method of handling the large numbers of sheep and lambs which it was necessary to kill at the peak of the season. Especially was this so for onL lUsh of bobby c;llve? > often up to 9000 or more a day in the calvinperiod. c The statement also said that the company had offered to facilitate the setting up of a disputes committee or reference to the Court.