Decision Reserved In Strike Appeal

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30682, 23 February 1965, Page 3

Decision Reserved In Strike Appeal

“The Press” Special Service

WELLINGTON, February 22. Inciting an illegal strike should be considered a criminal matter, it was contended in the Court of Arbitration today. The Court was hearing an appeal by Douglas Mcßae Warren, secretary of the Islington branch of the New Zealand Freezing Workers’ Union. Decision was reserved.

He was fined £5 and costs in Christchurch on May 29 for inciting or instigating an illegal strike.

To do so is an offence under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Amendment Act, 1962.

The strike was a stop-work meeting on October 24, 1963, which discussed Warren’s pay being docked for time spent on union business. Mr E. A. Lee, S.M., held the case was a civil one where all evidence could be considered and a decision reached on the balance of probabilities.

For Warren, in Court yesterday, Mr B. McClelland said the matter, being penal, should be proved beyond reasonable doubt as in any other criminal case.

Inciting or instigating an illegal strike was an offence, so it could not be considered a civil matter, Mr McClelland argued. “Your Honour held previously any penal action requires proof beyond all reasonable doubt,” he told Mr Justice Tyndall, who presided. “Wrong Standard” Mr McClelland said in treating the matter as a civil action, the Magistrate had adopted a wrong standard of proof. Mr McClelland also claimed Warren was prosecuted in an attempt to discipline him in his function as a union official.

He produced a letter from the New Zealand Refrigerating Company, Ltd., where Warren worked, which said Warren was being prosecuted as secretary of the union.

"Intimidating a union official is also an offence under the act,” he told the Court. For the plaintiff, the New Zealand Freezing Companies’ Industrial Union of Employers, Mr W. R. Birks, said the matter was a claim, and properly a civil one. The letter produced by Mr McClelland would not have been available had this been a criminal prosecution case, said Mr Birks.

Also, the process was by action, not by prosecution or information, as in criminal matters.

Therefore, the Magistrate had every right to decide the

case on balance of probabilities.

The defence had elected to give evidence, therefore the Magistrate had the right to consider it.

Mr Justice Tyndall said it might be possible for the Court to find a man not guilty by the standard of proof required for a penal offence. Yet he could perhaps be ordered to pay, in the case of a claim, by the standard of proof required in civil matters. Other members of the Court were Messrs W. N. Hewitt and A. B. Grant.