F.O.L. To Support Shop Assistants

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30602, 19 November 1964, Page 3

F.O.L. To Support Shop Assistants

(New Zealand Press Association)

NEW PLYMOUTH, November 18.

The Federation of Labour would take action supporting the shop assistants’ in their dispute with the Retailers’ Federation if the retailers’ stalled in fixing a date for renewing conciliation, the president of the Federation of Labour (Mr T. E. Skinner) said today.

“We are determined that in this issue we are not going to be defeated. If the employers are going to take us on at this stage it is going to be a costly manoeuvre for someone,” he said.

Mr Skinner was addressing the conference of the Northern, Taranaki, Wellington and Canterbury Waterside Workers’ Federation. He said he was not concerned whether the shop assistants worked two or four late

nights in a week—that was a matter for negotiation between them and their employers.

He was concerned that the employers told the shop assistants that unless they worked two late shopping nights during Christmas week then they would refuse to re-’ instate the unqualified preference clause in the Shop Assistants’ Award.

The shop assistants’ employers were using the threat of not renewing the clause as a “battering ram” to obtain j what they wanted and were breaking down the principle of conciliation and arbitration.

If it was left to the shop assistants to battle it out on their own, then they would be in a difficult situation.