Labour leadership candidates oppose cut from unions

Press, 4 March 1982, Page 3

Labour leadership candidates oppose cut from unions

PA Auckland All three contenders for the Labour Party presidency oppose a call by the party’s leader (Mr Rowling) for a scrapping of the party’s system of trade union affiliation.

However, they all agree, to varying degrees, that the present relationship needs a shake-up.

Mr J. P. Anderton, the sitting party president, has already defended the present system, but says it needs improvements. His two challengers yesterday agreed to the need for change but rejected Mr Rowling's call for disaffiliation. Both Mr Allan O’Neill, the president of the Auckland Carpenters’ Union and a party councillor, and Dr M. E. R. Basset, the member of Parliament for Te Atatu, emphasised the need to involve “the rank and file”

unionist in the activities of the party.

Mr O’Neill said: “The rank and file trade unionists have been and will remain constant supporters for the Labour Party at the ballot box. “But there’s too much complacency when it comes to participation. We want these rank and file people to become involved with the party at a branch and electorate level.

"I believe Bill Rowling is also concerned that some affiliated unions are Communist controlled and that their delegates to Labour Party meetings are instructed on how to vote and speak on certain remits.”

Mr O’Neill said that most affiliate members did not participate in the affairs of the party at branch or electorate level, while ordinary members worked hard all year, knocking , on doors.

fund-raising, and attending meetings. Proposed changes would get unionists’more involved in the party’s activities. "So anyone who says trade unionists would not have a say under a changed system is not correct,” he says.

Dr Basset called for a "deepened” relationship with the unions.

Links had to be deepened between the people on the shop floor and the party. The problem at present was that links between unions and the party were at an executive level.

“Too many shop floor people see the link as one with union officers," he said. “If there was one area which I feel we missed out on in the last election it was in our capacity to involve people on the shop floor who would normally be our supporters.” :