RIGHTS OF UNIONS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 113, 14 May 1914, Page 8

RIGHTS OF UNIONS

ASSISTANCE TO STRIKERS A RULING' QUESTIONED. (BT TELEGRAPH— SPECIAL TO THE POST.) CHKISTCHUKCH, This Day. Some little while ago the Canterbury Drivers' Union forwarded its rules ' to Wellington in order to have some amendments approved. When the rules were returned by the Registrar of Industrial Unions (Mr. 81.B 1 . J. Rowley) it was found that an old standing rule which set forth one of the objects of the union as being "to assist other workers in difficulties" had been deleted. ' Mr. Hiram Hunter, the secretary wi the union, took up the attitude that the Registrar had not the legal power to revoke a rule which had previously been approved and registered, and a correspondence ensued _ upon this point. In the course of this correspondence the Registrar stated that a recent decision of the Supreme Court had influenced him in the attitude he had taken up. Existing legislation, it appeared, offered very little guidance on the • eubject, the statute most .nearly affecting the caee setting forth at the end of a statement of specific purposes for -which a union might be formed a general permission to include in ite objects anything else of a "lawful" character. The question at issue, therefore, was whether the assistance of "other workers in difficulty" — which may be taken' as a euphemism for "other workers on strike" — was lawful or unlawful. In response to a request that he should forward a copy of the decision on which he relied, the Registrar sent to Mr. Hunter a copy of the judgment of the Chief Justice in the test case brought' by the Wellington Typographical Association, where the question at issue -was -whether the funds of the association' could legally be used to _ assist strikers in an industry not allied to /the typographical industry. The Chief Justice held that the association's funds could not be so used, basing his decision chiefly upon the association's rules, while- Mr. Justice Chapman, who also gave judgment on the case, came to a similar conclusion. Mr. Justice Chapman, in his judgment, stated that it was a "serious question" whether tho assistance of strikers by a union was or was not lawful. Neither of the two Judges specifically settled the vexwl question as to _ whether or not , the assistance of strikers by a union is lawful so far as the average layman <au glean, from, tho judgments as officially reported, but the tenor of the Chief "Justice's deliverance <>n _ the- subject certainly seems to lend weight to the assumption that if called upon to decide the question he would declare such assistance unlawful. The Drivers' Union, and other unions whose rules have been similarly amended by the Registrar are inclined, it would eeem, to accept th© Registrar's ruling on the subject without further debate.