TRADE UNION CONGRESS

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26126, 31 May 1950, Page 5

TRADE UNION CONGRESS

BREAKAWAY FROM FEDERATION

DISPUTE EXPLAINED TO BUSINESSMEN

“There has been the smear campaign which we expected. Those who led the breakaway have been called Communists or something worse, but to my knowledge there are only three or four avowed Communists—and I think they are the only ones—in the Trade Union Congress,” said Mr H. G. Kilpatrick, secretary of the Canterbury Freezing Workers’ Union and a member of the interim executive of the congress, when he told the Christchurch Businessmen’s Club the background of the dispute within the Federation of Labour which led to the congress being formed.

“I have heard it said that the Trade Union Congress has international affiliations with the World Federation of Trade Unions and the Congress of Industrial Organisations,” he said. “With the exception of the watersiders’ domestic affiliation with the maritime section of the W.F.T.U., we are not tied up overseas whatsoever. We are a New Zealand organisation.” After tracing the growth of industrial organisations to 1937 when the Federation of Labour was formed Mr Kilpatrick said that in the merger of industrial organisations damage was done to conceptions of industrial organisations which had long been the cherished impressions of many. Before the small craft groups could be induced to join, the larger groups had to make big concessions about representation. Those concessions laid the seeds for the recent break.

With compulsory unionism it was possible to organise two huge groups which previously had little or no strength. They were the Clerical Workers’ Union and the Shop Assistants’ Union. Traditionally they were not militant, but conservative.

With a conservative majority assured there had been no need to discuss at length controversial subjects and there had been no free, fair and frank discussions on many important subjects, Mr Kilpatrick continued. Those who had attended federation conferences had seen an increasing deterioration of democracy inside the federation. He thought that the split would have come earlier had it not been desired not to embarrass the Labour Government. Dispute with Watersiders The immediate cause of the break had been the dispute with the waterside workers over their attitude on the Auckland carpenters’ dispute and their affiliation with the maritime section of the W.F.T.U. On the latter issue the watersiders considered that their international affiliation was more valuable to them than their membership of the federation. “We (the freezing workers) don’t care two hoots who runs the Federation of Labour,” Mr Kilpatrick continued. “We don’t care whether he is a Labour Party supporter, a Communist, or a member of no party. We have been paying the federation more than £7OO a year in capitation, and we have not been given a decently-run organisation for the money.” Mr Kilpatrick listed the fundamental changes which he considered necessary in the federation as representation based more on the actual strength of affiliations, and a national executive elected way from Wellington.