Three Ships Delayed

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32032, 5 July 1969, Page 14

Three Ships Delayed

In Bluff Strike

(New Zealand Preet Association)

INVERCARGILL, July 4. Three ships were delayed in Bluff today by a 24-hour strike by seamen in sympathy with the oystermen who have been out of work since the Government closed the Foveaux Strait oyster beds.

The ships affected were the Government ferry Wairua arid two Union Steam Ship Company vessels, the Waimea and the Kaitoa. Captain 1 D. Williams, master of the Wairua, said tonight that his seven-man crew had been instructed by the Seamen’s Union not to sail Because of the stoppage, the ferry would run to Stewart Island tomorrow, a day on which it would not normally do so. The Invercargill manager of the Union Steam Ship Company, Mr L. M. Fairweather, said the company was informed an hour before sailing time that the two ships, one bound for Sydney and the other for Wellington would not sail. The union felt that this was the best place to makea protest gesture, the secretary of the Otago-Southland branch of the Seamen's Union, Mr G. S. MacLeod, said from Dun-

edin tonight. He Mid future aetion would depend on how quickly “things moved towards a fixture for the hearing of our writ on the Attorney-General (Mr Hanan).” The union was also protesting against the attitude of the Labour Department in deregistering oystermen as unemployed after they had refused to take jobs often 30 miles away from home. The department had said it would be “fixed up,” be said.

Stop-work meetings would be held by seamen at Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, Lyttelton and Dunedin on Tuesday, Mr MacLeod said.