TIMBER MILL DISPUTE

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25139, 21 March 1947, Page 6

TIMBER MILL DISPUTE

RAILWAYMEN REJECT OFFER COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY SOUGHT Dissatisfaction by the Addington workshops branch of A.S.R.S. with the Railway Department’s offer for a settlement of a recent dispute in the timber mill has led to a request that the Minister of Railways (Mr R. Semple) should set’ up a committee of inquiry into the pay, status, and general conditions at the mill. A development in the dispute is that the intervention of the Federation of Labour has been sought. After a meeting of the branch of the A.S.R.S. on Tuesday, the department’s offer, it is reported, was unanimously rejected by the men. The men disapproved of some of the conditions attaching to the offer of promotion of machinists to tradesmen, with a rise in wages of IJd an hour, and the failure to satisfy their demand that one of their number be

appointed a foreman in the mill. A meeting was later held with the disIputes committee of the Canterbury Trades Council. The scope of the dispute has spread and the national executives of the A.S.R.S. and the Federation of Labour have been asked to recommend to the Minister that a committee of inquiry be established. A further suggestion is that the federation should be represented on the proposed committee. Th tne meantime, work is being carried out at the mill under the conditions ruling before the men went on strike.