Minister’s suggestions called presumptive

Press, 8 March 1984, Page 2

Minister’s suggestions called presumptive

Suggestions by the Minister of Labour, Mr Bolger, that journalists of “The Press” had acted illegally by imposing a ban on the copy of a colleague were presumptive, said the president of the New Zealand Journalists’ Union, Mr A. T. O’Brien, in Christchurch yesterday. Mr Bolger should leave legal interpretation to the proper authority, in this case the Arbitration Court, Mr O’Brien said. “It is not up to him to judge a case of which he is not fully aware of the circumstances,” he said. The Timaru reporter of “The Press,” Mr D. W. Hodge, resigned from the union after voluntary unionism legislation came into effect Members of “The Press” journalists’ chapel then put a black ban on Mr Hodge’s copy. The union did not consider its action a strike, said Mr O’Brien. There was nothing to stop the cornpanes covering Timaru events using the Press Association service and its head office reporters. Nor did it consider the action illegal under the voluntary unionism law. The union had made it clear to the company that it did not want Mr Hodge dismissed, or pressured to rejoin the union.

“Mr Hodge did not want anything to do with his colleagues at "The Press’ and they have simply exercised their right to have nothing to do with him,” Mr O’Brien said. Mr O’Brien also took issue with Mr Bolger’s suggestion that it was hypocritical for journalists to uphold freedom of the press but reject “the now illegal principle of not working alongside non-union labour.”

Union members would not be made industrial eunuchs by the new legislation. “We are professional enough to be able to separate our obligations to the reader and our obligations to our professional organisation,” he said.

A secret ballot on whether to continue the ban, over Mr Hodge’s resignation from the union, will be held today by journalists employed by “The Press.” The Christchurch Press Company has agreed to pay travel and accommodation costs so that out-of-town members of the chapel can take part. The company, which said the action of the journalists amounted to a strike, has an application before the Arbitration Court seeking a secret ballot in which the journalists will be asked to declare whether they support the ban.