Unions To Demand End To Testing

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30856, 15 September 1965, Page 16

Unions To Demand End To Testing

(New Zealand Press Association!

WELLINGTON, September 14.

A conference of 13 Pacific nations in Sydney on December 6 would call on France to abandon its proposed nuclear tests near Tahiti, the secretary of the New Zealand Federation of Labour (Mr K. McL. Baxter) said today.

The nations being asked to send trade union representatives to the conference are New Zealand, Chile. Peru, Tahiti, Samoa, the Solomon Islands. Fiji, Singapore, Malaysia. Indonesia. the Philippines and Hawaii. Mr Baxter said the agenda would be the expression of opposition to all nuclear testing, and in particular to the proposed Pacific test. Invitations to the conference were being issued over the names of the F.O.L. and the Australian Council of Trade Unions by the two presidents. Mr T. E. Skinner and Mr A E. Monk.

Each country invited is being asked to send six national trade union representatives with voting powers Trade union representatives without voting powers would be welcomed on the basis of one representative a union. Mr Baxter said.

Mr H. J. Allen, general secretary of the New Zealand Workers’ Union, will leave on Saturday for two months in the United States on a leader grant from the United States Government. He will visit dam construction projects and similar undertakings.—(P.A.)