STATEMENT MADE BY COMMISSION

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25435, 5 March 1948, Page 9

STATEMENT MADE BY COMMISSION

RECOMMENDATION TO COMPANY (P.A.) WELLINGTON, March 4. The chairman of the Waterfront Industry Commission (Judge Dalglish), referring to the request by the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Waterside, Workers’ Union .to be allowed permission for an independent surveyor to inspect the hatches of the Mount Park, said that the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand, Ltd., advised the commission on Wednesday morning that the company proposed to refuse this application because the hatches had already been certified safe to handle by the Marine Department Surveyor of Ships, and had complied with Marine Department regulations.

The commission considered that there was no valid reason why an independent surveyor acting for the union should not be allowed to inspect the hatches. However, the commission had no authority to grant permission or to withhold permission, this being the sole prerogative of the master or agent of the ship, but it recommended to the Union Steam Ship Company, Ltd., that the union’s surveyor should be allowed to inspect the hatches, and suggested that he should not be accompanied by either representatives of the shipping company or of the union. At that time the commission had no information that the union desired its solicitor to accompany the surveyor. The Union Steam Ship Company, Ltd., accepted the commission’s recommendation, but when the application was made to the company’s branch manager at Auckland for the union solicitor to accompany its surveyor this was refused.

On the matter being brought before the notice of the commission this morning, the commission recommended to the Union Steam Ship Company, Ltd., that it grant permission to the union’s solicitor to accompany the surveyor in inspecting the hatches.

This recommendation was made to the company shortly after 10.30 a.m., and information was not received by the commission approving recommendation until 11.50 a.m., when the head office of the New Zealand Waterside Workers’ Union was advised’ accordingly The information was immediately communicated to the commission’s branch manager at Auckland, who informed the local branch of the union and the branch manager of the company. This infprmation was conveyed to the union shortly after noon, and as a number of men employed on the company’s vessels had gone home, those ships were not worked this afternoon. It is expected that normal work will resume on the company’s vessels as from 8 a.m. to-morrow. -subji Aqa-iaqi pue eij}sny uiojj A;iad

PLAZA “PAULA” Columbia’s film “Paula” opens at the Plaza to-day. The story is of a bank president who wants to rob his own bank. He finds a man who is not unlike him in appearance, kills him, and while the world mourns the loss of the “dead” banker, he escapes with the bank’s cash. The banker in this case fails to reckon with the capriciousness and perfidy of his glamorous ally, a waitress, who tinkers with the plans. Janis Carter is the wicked woman in this film with Barry Sullivan as the bad banker and Glen Ford as the potential corpse. The picture is full of suspense. EMPIRE “SPELLBOUND” Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound,” starring Ingrid Bergman, Academy Award winner, and Gregory Peck, will open at the Empire to-day. Adapted from the psychological thriller novel. “The House of Dr. Edwardes,” by Hilary St. George Saunders and Leslie Palmer the film tells the story of a man suffering from amnesia who is suspected of murder and because of his lost memory believes himself guilty. Ingrid Bergman, as a psychiatrist in love with Peck, desperately tries to save him from punishment for a crime she is sure he did not commit. The most interesting feature of the film, apart from the plot and the acting. is the work of Salvador Dali in designing the dream sequences of the mentally deranged man. Both memory and solution of* the mystery are found i through the use of psychoanalysis.