Cargo Handling Delays Studied

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29900, 14 August 1962, Page 18

Cargo Handling Delays Studied

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, August 13. Shift work on the New Zealand waterfront and incentives to avoid delays in cargo handling will be investigated by a committee representative of waterfront employers and workers. After a major industrial conference last week employers and watersiders had agreed to co-operate to eliminate abuses and delays on the waterfront, said the president of the Federation of Labour (Mr F. P. Walsh) today. The meeting had considered a proposal that watersiders work in wet and boisterous weather, said Mr Walsh. The employers had proposed to outfit each watersider with a personal wet weather kit. The employers had earlier proposed that the claim go before the Waterfront Industry Tribunal. The workers’ representatives had said that 48 years ago the Court of Arbitration had given the workers a clause excluding them from having to work in the rain. Mr Walsh said he had put it to the Minister that unless some formula could be reached before the tribunal sat it “looked like a head-on collision between the watersiders and the employers.’’ “We finally came to an agreement at the conference." Mr Walsh said. Both employers and workers had agreed to co-operate in “seeing that any abuses of the present wet weather clause are eliminated." The parties had agreed to exercise “tolerance and consideration to ensure that work proceeds to the fullest extent possible without subjecting the men to unfair conditions of work." A proposal to hold further meetings between the waterfront employers and workers had now been confirmed. The joint committee, together with F.O.L. representatives. “will examine the practicability of carrying out waterside work under a shift system. “If this is considered practicable. ways and means of giving effect to the proposal, including conditions of employment, will be considered."

A representative committee, with representatives of the Waterfront Industry Commission, would review the present co-operative contracting and incentive payment schemes, said Mr Walsh. “Any new scheme should so far as possible give an equal return to the workers for equal effort. “At the same time it should be designed so as to provide a real incentive to workers to reduce delays and unproductive time in the performance of waterside wosk."