RAILWAYMEN'S ATTITUDE

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25084, 16 January 1947, Page 6

RAILWAYMEN'S ATTITUDE

MEETINGS HELD AT OTAHUHU

STATEMENT BY CHAIRMAN (P.A.) AUCKLAND, January 15. The chairman of the Otahuhu branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (Mr L. Reid) said that a report of two meetings of railwaymen did not accurately describe those meetings. The first was a mass meeting addressed by Mr A. Drennan, national vice-president of the Waterside Workers’ Union, and Mr J. Mitchell, a member of the national council of the union, and was held at the Otahuhu workshops on Monday. The second was a meeting of the Otahuhu branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and was held at Newmarket on Monday night. Mr Reid said he was chairman of both meetings. At the mass meeting. Mr Drennan gave a brief outline or the issues involved in the waterfront dispute. He had only 20 minutes at his disposal, and at the end of his address he answered a question which referred to an appeal made by Messrs H. Barnes and T. Hill to railwaymen to return to work during the railway strike of Febrdary, 1945. Mr Drennan, said Mr Reid, correctly pointed, out that Messrs .Barnes and Hill were then speaking, not on behalf of the Waterside Workers’ Union, but on behalf of, and with the full authority of, tfie New Zealand Federation of Labour. Mr Drennan also said that if the watersiders were given the same guarantees as railway workers were given, they too would resume normal work.

Mr Reid also said that Mr Drennan was given a good reception and not, as had been reported, a cool one. The resolution carried by the meeting, said Mr Reid, was that each of the two unions, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and the Railway Tradesmen’s Association should discuss at their own meetings their attitude towards the dispute. Mr Reid continued that in accordance with the resolution of the mass meeting, the dispute was discussed the same night at an ordinary monthly meeting of the Otahuhu branch of the society, and not, as had been reported, an executive meeting of the branch. A resolution was unanimously adopted supporting the attitude of the New Zealand Transport Workers’ Federation, and asking the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants’ executive council to take the matter up sympathetically. . Mr Reid added that the attitude of the New Zealand Transport Workers Federation was one of support for the waterside workers’ claims. It had offered its services to the waterside workers to bring about a settlement.