Wharves Idled By Tallow Dispute

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30576, 20 October 1964, Page 1

Wharves Idled By Tallow Dispute

Work on the waterfront at Lyttelton stopped yesterday morning after a meeting oyer the tallow dispute which has spread from Wellington and 70,000 tons of shipping were idle.

About 675 men who attended the meeting decided to stop work for the day as a protest over the placing on penalty of two men who were attending the tallow hose at the Kwangsi on Friday evening. The men had refused to unload a second waggon in the rain.

After a meeting of the union executive at 8.15 a.m. the special meeting was called for 10 a.m. When the decision had been made the routine handling of mail, perishable goods, stock, passengers’ cars and luggage from the inter-island steamer express Hinemoa continued but the rest of the waterfront stopped for the day.

In Wellington the deputy chairman and general secretary of the Port Employers’ Association (Mr V. P. Blakeley) announced there would be no fresh jobs begun on the Lyttelton wharves until members of the union agreed to work bulk tallow on the Kwangsi and other vessels entering port in the future.

The Minister of Labour (Mr Shand) reported to the Cabinet on the dispute and also met the executive of the Federation of Labour. He said later the dispute had become a “direct challenge to the whole system of conciliation and arbitration.” Where some port unions were refusing to carry out a decision of the Waterfront Industry Tribunal, the employers would have ‘he full backing of the Government, Mr Shand said. Employers Blamed By making the Kwangsi a preference ship yesterday morning, the employers had

‘deliberately enlarged the dispute, said the secretary of the Lyttelton Waterfront Workers’ Union (Mr R. K. Fergus). Seventy-six men were forced to go on penalty sooner than replace their workmates.

At the time, he said, the port had 151 existing vacancies for other work and this showed that the employers were determined to enlarge the dispute as much as possible. In any case many of these men would not have been strictly eligible for the hose job because not all of them were “deckmen.” By local agreement only "deckmen” were permitted to accept such jobs as the one in dispute. “No Mandate” Although an agreement was reached at Wellington concerning the loading of tallow, at no stage had the Federation of Labour or the watersiders agreed to a mandate to start loading bulk tallow in wet weather, Mr Fergus said. After yesterday’s stop-work meeting, which lasted an hour, watersiders returned to close ship’s hatches. Two trucks of wool which remained throughout the meeting on the wharf were loaded

aboard the Hororata. By noon, the waterfront, except for skeleton work aboard the Hinemoa, was idle. One new arrival, the South Africa Star, did not start work at all. She is scheduled to load 320 tons of bulk tallow, besides general cargo. There was only one other arrival, the Union Company’s inter-colonial trader, Waipori. After her arrival, crew members unloaded a horse and dog with the permission of the watersiders. Ships In Port Overseas vessels in port yesterday were the Port Louis Maru, Main Lloyd, Crusader, Haparangi, Hororata, South Africa Star, Kwangsi, and the Waipori (intercolonial). The Konini, Kopara, Tawanui, and Moanui, all coastal traders, were also immobilised. Several of the overseas vessels are loading wool.

A considerable quantity of wool transported by road and some refrigerated cargo have had to be returned to storage in the meantime. The only vessels due today are the Maori, Hotunui, and Middlesex.

The secretary of the Lyttelton branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (Mr R. Meiklejohn) said his union would carry out normal work, but would not do anything normally done by watersiders. There are a large number of rail waggons under load at Lyttelton with cargo to be loaded aboard ships in port.