NO PLAN FOR STOPPAGES

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28822, 17 February 1959, Page 14

NO PLAN FOR STOPPAGES

Watersiders’ Denial (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, February 16. Both the president of the Wellington Amalgamated Waterside Workers’ Union (Mr T. S. Wells) and" its secretary (Mr T. Bruce) today denied that there were plans for a stoppage of work next week-end similar to that which halted the waterfront in Wellington, Auckland, and other ports during the week-end. Work on the waterfronts was resumed at 8 a.m. today. “We have no knowledge of anything like that,” said Mr Wells. “There’s nothing like that, that I know of,” said Mr Bruce. “It was a protest and that was that,” he said, referring to the stoppage. According to some reports, the stoppage of work on Friday and Saturday last week is to be only the first of a series of industrial stoppages until the employers accede to the demands for higher pay in the industrial disputes with watersiders and seamen. Waterfront officials agreed, however, their membership was incensed at the recent refusal of the employers to make any offer in Conciliation Council of higher wages. The president of the Federated Seamen’s Union (Mr F. P. Walsh) said: "The shipowners have flung down the cudgels and we have accepted them.” He charged the management of the major shipping company involved in the dispute with a lack of interest. It was the first occasion in 30 years of negotiation that he had failed to reach a settlement with the employers, said Mr Walsh. The Government had been asked to step in under the Industrial Conciliaiton and Arbitration Act and prevent any recurrence of the strike, said the secretary of the New Zealand Port Employers’. Association (Mr V. P. Blakeley) today. “We are waiting for a reply to our telegram to the Government,” he said. The backlog of cars awaiting shipment south in the inter-island steamers will take until tomorrow night to clear. Cars had been held up since Friday, and it -was impassible to dear the number waiting shipment in' One sailing, said an official of the Unlap Steam Ship Company today.