Barmaid Brings Ban On Beer Delivery

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30682, 23 February 1965, Page 1

Barmaid Brings Ban On Beer Delivery

(New Zealand Preet Association)

DUNEDIN, February 22.

The Otago Trades Council has placed a ban on the delivery of beer to the Gresham Hotel, Dunedin, because the hotel has continued to employ a barmaid in the public bar.

The ban will continue and the barmaid, Mrs Holly Johnson, will be kept out of the bar until a suitable partition is built.

“We’ve enough beer to last until Thursday morning and by that time we hope to have the partition completed,” the licensee, Mr I. Bright, said tonight. The partition is to divide the public bar so that the section where Mrs Johnson serves will be a private bar. The ban, according to the Trades Council, comes as a sequel to an agreement which Mr Bright and a union deputation made just before Christmas.

On that occasion the hotel employees’ union wanted Mrs Johnson out of the public bar because the union had an agreement with the New Zealand Hotels’ Association that barmaids were not to be employed in public bars. It was then agreed that Mrs Johnson could remain in the public bar if a suitable partition was built. Just after Mr Bright received notice of the ban today he telephoned the brewery for more beer. “They accepted the order, but it wasn't long before they rang back and said the Brewery Workers’ Union and the Drivers’ Union would nol handle it.” “We got on to the Trades Council and were told that

as soon as we got a suitable partition up the ban would be lifted. “This afternoon Trades Council representatives met with me in the bar and we agreed that swinging doors would be suitable to separate Mrs Johnson from the public bar.” When the president of the Trades Council, Mr W. T. L. Peart was approached for his comments tonight he felt the ban would have been avoided if the original request for a partition had been met. “I hope your readers can see the joke, and if any of them can't, tell them to come and see for themselves—that is, of course, after my swinging partition is built,” said Mrs Johnson tonight.