Union secretary gives up fight

Press, 4 November 1983, Page 5

Union secretary gives up fight

Mrs Doreen Shannon, secretary of the Canterbury Clerical Union, resigned on Monday. “I decided on Sunday: I’d had a guts full. I am too tired to fight any more,” she said yesterday.

Mrs Shannon has encountered many difficulties in her five years as secretary. During her term, several field officers have resigned or have offered their resignations on request. Late last month she faced a virtual rebellion among the ranks of her field officers, who stood firm behind an office worker whom Mrs Shannon had dismissed. She has also had to fight a legal battle with her former assistant secretary, Mr Errol Crockett. The union’s executive asked for her resignation. Mrs Shannon said that the executive had prepared what she called a> “crime sheet” outlining items of dissatisfaction such as allegedly swearing, and having an unlisted telephone number.

“I feel very sad. There is a power struggle inside the union that is destroying it,” she said.

Invited to elaborate, she said that some people were wanting higher office. It was also a matter of what she called trade union politics.

The union’s vice-presi-dent, Ms Betty Roberts, and two executive members, have resigned in support of Mrs Shannon. They are Mr Eric Nicholas and Mrs P. A. Lewis. They have since been replaced. Mrs Shannon’s daughter, Karenia, has also

tendered her resignation as an office worker in the union office in the Trade Union Centre in Christchurch. She will leave the union next week. Mrs Shannon said that she was not sure what she would do now. “I will be looking at all the options in the next few weeks. I have no immediate plans. I just feel sheer relief at getting out,” she said. ' Mrs Shannon was one of only three women union secretaries in Canterbury, and was the first woman secretary of any clerical union in New Zealand when she became secretary of the Southland Clerical Workers’ Union in 1975. She was appointed secretary of the Canterbury union in May, 1978, succeeding Mr E. C. Blacker, who retired after 28 years. She was to have left for Japan in less than two weeks with the secretary of

the Clerical Workers’ Association, Mr John Slater, to represent clerical workers at the world congress of the International Union of Clerical, Administrative, Scientific and Technical Unions. Her bookings have been cancelled. She said that she had found .it hard being a woman trade unionist. That difficulty was made worse by her having come in as an. “outsider” from Southland.

“I lived in a glass box for 5% years,” she said.

Mrs Shannon claims that she achieved most of what she set out to do: doubling membership to more than 9000 and steering the union through the troubled waters of compulsory union ballots in 1979.

She also had to contend with a deregistration threat from the Government in 1979 when airline clerks were threatening to refuse to issue travel tickets to members of Parliament in a dispute over taxes on travel allowances.

A former president of the union, Mr P. D. Lawson, who was on the selection panel which chose Mrs Shannon in 1978, said that she had “delivered the goods and had done exactly what she was employed to do.”

“She dragged the union out of the 1960 s and into the 1980 s,” he said. Mr Lawson is a field officer in the union.

The union’s president, Mr W. Stanbury, said that the executive had appointed a field officer, Mr T. M. Smith, as acting secretary.