Bid to recover pay

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33581, 9 July 1974, Page 14

Bid to recover pay

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, July. 8. The injunction obtained by a Wellington carpenter, Mr M. V. Bellamy, to prevent his union calling him out on the 24-hour stoppage last Friday had still not been delivered to his union today. But Mr Bellamy moved again on the issue this morning. He instructed his solicitors to take Supreme Court action to have the stoppage declared illegal as far as the Wellington Carpenters’ Union is concerned. If Mr Bellamy gets the support of the court on this the union might have to pay him, and possibly every other carpenter who stopped work on its orders, a day’s pay for last Friday.

On Friday, Mr Bellamy obtained the injunction to stop his union protesting against injunctions. It apparently was delivered to the wrong quarter, and the union had not received it by this morning. The court will now be asked to declare the stoppage an illegal strike on the

ground that clause 22 of the union’s rules provides that a secret ballot of members is a necessary preliminary to any strike or stoppage. The application will allege that this provision was not observed by the union. “It would be interesting to know if any union official loses a day’s pay for last Friday,” Mr Bellamy said today. “LOSS SERIOUS” Mr Bellamy, married, with five children, said the loss of a day’s pay was serious for him and his family. But if a democratic vote of members had been held on the stop-work question he would have abided by the majority decision.

"I have got nothing against unions provided they follow the rules," he said. Mr Bellamy, who works on a Wellington city construction site, said he and the other carpenters on the job went home on Thursday night not knowing that they were to stop work the next day. On Thursday night he got in touch with union officials, learned of the stoppage, then called his solicitor. On Friday the application

for an injunction was taken before a judge and signed just after 2 p.m. “We couldn’t find any union officials to deliver it and so we took it to the union solicitor,” Mr Bellamy said. The union’s secretary (Mr A. Russ) said this morning that an envelope delivered to the union’s legal advisers on Friday afternoon was still unopened. “The people concerned, the union, must be served with any papers of such a nature, ana this has not been done," Mr Russ said.