Turangi Men Fear For Their Jobs

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31112, 15 July 1966, Page 14

Turangi Men Fear For Their Jobs

(New Zealand Press Association/ NEW PLYMOUTH, July 14. A four-hour stop-work meeting of the Turangi branch of the New Zealand Workers’ Union today demanded an explanation of the deadlock between the Federation of Labour and Italian tenderers for the Tongariro power development scheme tunnel contract.

More than 500 members of the union decided to ask the union’s head office to invite the president of the federation (Mr T. E. Skinner) to explain the static situation at another stopwork meeting.

But Mr Skinner, said in a telephone interview at Auckland today: “I have to spend so much time on other details of the dispute, I don’t think I will be able to come to Turangi.”

The men were concerned their jobs were in jeopardy, the secretary of the branch, ; Mr J. Foley, said after today’s meeting. Generally, the men were I more than satisfied with work-1

Workers’ Union (Mr W. Whitty). It was usual on schemes of the magnitude of the Tongariro project to have frequent stop-work meetings and even strikes, Mr Whitty said. The reason for the harmony was the excellent working conditions, especially the housing, he said.

ing conditions on the scheme, Mr Foley said. “The houses are second to none,” he said. “Why should the Italians, thousands of miles away, disrupt the lives of men actually working on the job.” Today’s meeting was the annual general meeting of the branch, which had been brought forward by a month so the present state of the dispute could be discussed. The harmony between workers and the Ministry of Works on the scheme was discribed as “novel” by the national president of the