"BLISTERS."

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 102, 2 May 1911, Page 3

" BLISTERS."

RAILWAY MEN DISSATISFIED. complaints of espionage and understaffing: [mi TCLIGBAPH — SPECIAL TO TH* *OST.} AUCKLAND, This Day. Evidence of dissatisfaction in the railway service was furnished when a meeting of the traffic hands upon the Auckland section was held to discuss their grievances. The principal complaint against the department was its alleged practice of employing a man to travel on the trains to detect guards in permitting passengers to over-ride their distances and in failing to issue and cancel tickets in the presence of passengers who joined trains at flag stations. This individual, said one speaker, liad disturbed both the Wellington and Wanganui sections, and was now in Auckland, with the result that guards were now getting memoranda — in railway parlance called " blisters " — calling upon them to explain why a ticket was not issued and cancelled in the presence of a certain passenger, or why other people were allowed to override. The name of the informant was never given. The speaker said that it was impossible on a lengthy train stopping at stations every few minutes for the guard to carry out his duties thoroughly, and tho measures taken to cheek tickets to-day were the same as they were ten or twelve years ago, when the traffic was very much lighter. "If this sort of thing is going to be allowed to continue," he declared, "it means that the majority of our men are going to resign." Other speakers declared that the department was making the men the scapegoats for ite own mismanagement, and that it was endeavouring to brand honest mon placed 1 in a position of trust as thieves. Among other grievances cited were that in many cases holidays were three and six months overdue, that tho men in the service got only their socalled annual leave in thirteen months, thus losing one annual holiday in thirteen years ; that the men were called upon to work shifts of four or five hours in the mornings, and had to work their full shifts later on in the day or evening ; that the department failed to back up the men when in pursuance of their duty they reported offences, and that the clerks and the staff of the manager's office were the greatest offenders in failing to produce their tickets. It was decided to appoint a.- deputation to represent the grievances to the stationmaster and the traffic manager. One speaker said that the reason whyi the department was so short of men was that it did not offer sufficient inducement to men to join, and no man in the. service would consider it friendly that he should ask one of his friends to do so. A shunter stated that the shunters in the goods yard had decided to send in a "round robin" to the traffic manager stating their grievances, particularly regarding the manner in which the foreman harassed the men. Tho signal box on Beach-road (near the railway wharf), he added, was dangerously understaffed, while the goods ya,rd was the most congested in New Zealand, being nothing but a death-trap. Conditions in the goods yard were so bad that men were resigning every .week.