Travellers allowed to go alone

Press, 1 September 1977, Page 2

Travellers allowed to go alone

After a legal battle for about a year. Christchurch commercial travellers and salesmen are now free to form their own union.

At present they are cove.cd by the rules of the Canterbury Storemen and Packers’ Union. But that ..lion voted in favour of a rule change which would exclude coverage of the travellers, and yesterday the union secretary (Mr P. Piesse) received official word from the Registrar of Industrial Unions that the rule change has been registered.

The battle began last year, when the removal of a salary bar meant that travellers had to join the Storemen’s Union. Travellers in Auckland managed to form their own union, and other centres set about following suit.

Canterbury travellers met in September, last year when the general feeling of the meeting was opposition to unions, but a realisation that if there had to be a union it should be one run by the travellers themselves. They formed an industrial society of workers as the first step, then “stacked” the Storemen’s Union annual meeting, and voted themselves on to the union’s executive — just to make I sure that plans to break iaway would not be thwarted.