Strong line on ballot

Press, 22 February 1978, Page 6

Strong line on ballot

Parliamentary reporter The Government has been told that unless it drops its plan of conducting union ballots on compulsory membership, the Federation of Labour will “think again” about the conditional support it has given. The president of the F.O.L. (Sir Thomas Skinner), with members of his executive, waited on the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) and the Acting Minister of Labour (Mr Thomson) yesterdav afternoo’ and delivered somethin? close to an ultimatum. Sir Thomas called on the Government to drop the ballot arrangement and ratify convention 87 of the International Labour Organisation, giving workers’ and employers’ organisations full freedom to draw up their own constitution and rules. There would be no need for State-run ballots; unions would have the freedom to run their own ballots.

Mr Muldoon listened to what was said, and undertook to pass it on to the caucus and the relevant committees. It is believed, however, that this could be the last of the proposal to conduct ballots on compulsory unionism. Since the ballots were attempted, certain difficulties have arisen, rnd not much progress has been made. It is one promise on the National manifesto which is not likely to be fulfilled by General Election time. In any case, the Canterbury Rubber Workers’ Union will hold a stopwork meeting today to discuss how to react to the Government’s proposed compulsory ballot. No official confirmation had been received that it would be the second union to have a ballot, but in December the Government wrote to the F.O.L. naming the union for the next ballot, said the secretary (Mr L. G. Morel) yesterday.