Ban On Communists As Union Officials Urged

Press, Volume C, Issue 29643, 13 October 1961, Page 14

Ban On Communists As Union Officials Urged

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, Oct. 12. The Local Body Officers’ Union has authorised a submission on its behalf to the Parliamentary committee taking evidence on voluntary unionism that anybody supporting a totalitarian form of government should be inelegible for union office. The biennial conference of the Wellington, Marlborough. Westland, Nelson and Taranaki Local Bodies’ Officers’ Union today empowered its secretary, Mr P. Butler, to speak on its behalf on the proposed amendments to the

Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. The improper use of unionism must be in the minds of many people, said Mr Butler. Over the years some unions, and unionism generally, had lost prestige by the improper keeping of accounts, so that the Legislature had had to step in to prevent it recurring. A more important matter was the use of unions as “a kind of fifth column,” he said. Mr Butler suggested the act provide that a member of a Communist. Nazi or Fascist organisation or any other organisation supporting a totalitarian form of government, should not be elegible for office or be its representative. Other philosophies as well as communism would be included to avoid the suggestion that it was “McCarthyism.” Answering a delegate who asked how communists could be kept out. since communists were not registered and the Communist Party was not illegal. Mr Butler said only the Legislature could rectify the position. It had been ruled in the past that a union could not provide for the exclusion of communists. There were people who were sent into unions not to further the objects of the unions, but to further an international programme.