One union’s woes

Press, 13 June 1977, Page 16

One union’s woes

Comment from the Capital

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

The old saying about kicking a man when he is down seems to apply to the Storemen and Packers’ Union. Rumours of “fiddling the books” within the Federated Storemen and Packers and Warenouse Employees Industrial Association of Workers have surfaced as far apart as Hawke’s Bay, Wellington and Dunedin.

The union's secretary (Mr P. J. Mansor) said in' Wellington that he did not know who had their knife out for the union. The union was not •» member of the Federation of Labour and had been squabbling with the drivers, watersiders and freezing workers for nearly 10 years over containerisation. he said, but this

now seemed to be dying down as an issue among the four unions. There was also the latent conflict within the union between the interests of storemen and packers on the one hand and commercial travellers on the other hand, which was simmering in some areas. The only reason Mr Manso.- could think of for pointing the finger at Hawke’s Bay was that the local union was a bit behind in its affiliation payments to the national federation. This had been agreed to by the federation because of problems in Hawke’s Bay, and there was no suggestion of malpractice.

Similarly, in Dunedin, complaints about irregularities in the election of

officers at the annual meeting in March might have been exaggerated. Two commercial travellers had voted at the meeting when they, were not entitled to do so. "There has been an application for an enquiry into alleged irregularities in the conduct of the ballot,” Mr Mansor said. “The matter has been referred to the Industrial Court by the Registrar of Industrial Unions (Mr R. A. Quay), but as 80 of the 108 attending the annual meeting were commercial travellers, it is not likeiy to affect the outcome of the vote.” Finally, there is the most persistent rumour of the three, about malpractice in Wellington. Mr Mansor said the Wellington union had had to part with the services of Mr D. Butler, the national research officer, but this had been on a longstanding agreement with Mr Butler. Mr Butler had been paid by Wellington on a parttime basis for research work, but most of his work had been for the national federation. Finally, the Wellington union had got tired of paying for a service enjoyed by ail members of the federation, and when the other unions had declined to pay their share for Mr Butler’s work, the Wellington union had withdrawn. “This may have given rise to the runours, but Mr Butler knew for at least two years that if the other unions would not support Wellington, then his employment would have to cease,” Mr Mansor said. It all seems to be a storm in a teacup, but the storemen and packers have had some unfortunate publicity in recent years, culminating in the spectacle of the national secretary being refused admittance to the Canterbury union’s annual meeting. Mr Mansor said that although he did not know -who was stirring up trouble for the union, obviously someone was.