UNION’S SUIT AGAINST FORMER SECRETARY

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 142, 12 March 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

UNION’S SUIT AGAINST FORMER SECRETARY

Judgment For Defendant (Special to Press Association.) Auckland, March 10. Further evidence was heard in the Magistrates’ Court in the claim' by the Auckland and Suburban Local Bodies’ Labourers’ Industrial Union of Workers against its former secretary, Bernard Clews, for the return of a motorcar and bank, books or, alternatively, £230 and £lO damages for their detention.

The case, which opened a week previously, was resumed before Mr. W. R. McKean, S.M. At the conclusion the magistrate said the union had to act only through its executive officers, and these officers in turn had to be appointed according to the rules of the union. This had been pointed out to this particular union in a recent Supreme Court decision, but yet there had been recurrences of actions which should not have been permitted by men upon whom the necessity for acting properly had been so impressed. At the election of officers before the dismissal of defendant non-members had been allowed to vote, and it was also absurd to suggest that members should be deprived of the right to require a secret postal ballot. Since a general meeting might attract only a certain number of members, it might be considered desirable to have an expression of opinion from the whole of the union, but in this case such a request had been ignored. Mr. McKean said he could not say in the circumstances that the men who claimed to be the executive really were the executive. The position as he saw it was that a person who had been elected at a general meeting and had been re-elected again and again over 20 years was entitled to show that the persons who dismissed him had not been raised to the position according to the rules of the union.

Judgment was given for defendant with costs.