OCCUPATION OF VIENNA

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27735, 12 August 1955, Page 12

OCCUPATION OF VIENNA

“Passive Resistance To Russians” N.Z. UNION LEADER’S IMPRESSIONS (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, Aug. 11. When he visited Vienna for an international labour conference, he had been impressed by the attitude of passive resistance the Viennese adopted towards Russian occupying forces, said the secretary of the New Zealand Federation of Labour (Mr K. McL. Baxter) today. “They were glad to see the back of them,” said Mr Baxter, who returned yesterday from three months in Europe as a New Zealand labour representative at four international conferences. “A visit by conference delegates to the Russian area showed many signs of deterioration in that zone compared with the British and American areas,” he said. “A run-down atmosphere was apparent on all sides in the Russian zone. “The Austrian people a policy of passive resistances No effort had been made to get factories or industry really operating.” He was certain that the four labour conferences had done much to unite trade unions internationally, said Mr Baxter. It had been decided to extend and intensify trade union activities in underdeveloped lands. It had been quite evident that representatives from the seven Iron Curtain countries had wanted to use the international labour conferences for propaganda purposes, he said. Efforts by these seven countries to have Communist employer representation on employer committees had been rejected on the ground that the so-called employers’ representatives were really representatives of the Communist Party.