HOTELS DISPUTE Strike Funds Established

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32352, 18 July 1970, Page 1

HOTELS DISPUTE Strike Funds Established

Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland hotel workers voted yesterday to strike every Friday and Saturday until they have negotiated a satisfactory settlement with the employers.

Strike funds were established, and there was a hardening of the workers’ intention to hold out for a full 30 per cent wage increase and a swing away from accepting the employers’ offer to negotiate a new award.

As expected. Christchurch hotel workers did not return to work after their 2 p.m stop-work meeting and are on strike today. The Canterbury Hotel Association, however, has not repeated its previous ban on the opening of city and suburban hotels. Most hotels will keep their bottle stores open, many of the smaller ones will admit regular customers to their bars, and some, as far as possible, will carry on business a usual. STRONG VOTE

About 700 hotel workers attended yesterday's meeting in the Christchurch Civic Theatre, and about 20 of them voted against the national recommendation for a two-day strike every week. Of these 20, several had previously

said that two days was not long enough. There was some criticism after the meeting that this vote had been taken on a show of hands and not by a secret ballot. The secretary of the Canterbury Hotel Workers’ Union (Mr L. N. Short) said there had been no request for a ballot, but he would have called for one himself if the open voting had not been so overwhelming. The workers were told that the employers had refused to pay their proposed 15 per cent wage increase as an interim payment during negotiations for a new award, and that there was no guarantee that these negotiations eould be completed within a month, if at all. T.H.C. VIEW Mr Short—one of the national assessors who met !the employers in Wellington on Thursday—said the Tourist Hotel Corporation had informed them that it reserved the right to negotiate its own agreement if it was not satisfied with the proposed award. It would only take the corporation—or any one of the other employers—to make an individual stand, and it would be impossible to cancel the present award and negotiate a new one, said Mr Short And in any case, the new award was the employers* idea not the workers’, and if the employers were going to continue stalling, the workers should return to their original request for a 30 per cent interim wage increase to be added to the present award rates. OTHER CENTRES This view was strongly supported yesterday, not only by i the Christchurch hotel workers, but by the unionists in Wellington and Auckland. Each of the centres accepted another recommendation by the national executive: that work would be done as usual for any individual employer who was prepared to meet the 30 per cent interim pay claim. SUPPORT GIVEN 1 Hotel workers in Dunedin I yesterday decided to continue I striking on one day a week I —Friday—and Gisborne wor!kers decided not to strike in !the meantime but to contribute at least $1 a week per head of their own membership to the Auckland strikers.

Messages of support for the hotel workers have been received from the Auckland and Wellington Drivers’ Unions, the New Zealand Seamen’s Union, the New Zealand Brewery Workers’ Union, the Wellington Waterside Workers’ Union, the Auckland Storemen and Packers' Union and Mr E. Isbey, M.P.