WILL SEAMEN STRIKE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 104, 29 October 1913, Page 8

WILL SEAMEN STRIKE

"EVERY FAITH IN EXECUTIVE" AN UNOFFICIAL DECLARATION. A speaker in Post Office-square this j afternoon was a member of the Seamen's j Union. He threw some interesting light- ; on the attitude t-aken up by the members ) of the organisation to which he belonged. Referring to the remarks of a previous speaker, also a seaman, who had con- j . demned Mi-. Young as being unfit to hold ; the office of secretary of the union, the I speaker took up th© cudgels on behalf ! of Mr. Young, and emphatically re- ! marked that the members of the union j had every faith iit its executive. He would, he said, have refrained from ! speaking had not an attack been made j upon Mr. Y<rang. Proceeding, he remarked that if the waterside workers in other parts of the Dominion were to come out as the Auckland men were n>ported_ to have done, there would be no necessity for the firemen and seamen to strike — they would be locked out. If the beats were locked up there -would be no work for the seamen, and they would be paid off. The union had something like 1800 members in Wellington, 600 in Auckland, and 600 in the South, and they worked under a mutual agreement under which there was no penalty for a 3trike. There were certain provisions under the Shipping and Seamen Amendment Act, however, which provided for a penalty if the union .failed to provUe a crew for any ship. A voice: What's your attitude? The speaker replied that he was not going to be influenced by his own personal views, but by the views of the executive elected by himself and Ids fellow-members, an executive in whom they all had the greatest confidence. Ho did not believe in one union dictating to another urrion. "Take no notice of any statement to the effect thai, the seamen are coining ou^" he added. "I am not speaking- officially, but I say *Chey i-WU no tcome out until the executive-,

and then, if a strike were deemed advisable, every seaman and fireman would come out." He added that" the Seamen's Union was endeavouring not to extend the strike to the seamen, but was desirous that it should be settled along tho water front. The strike so far had been conducted cleanly— the system of picketing was a splendid feature — and it would not be right for ally outside union to attempt to dictate to the strikers as to what they were to do.