SHEARERS' DISPUTE

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 113, 13 May 1921, Page 7

SHEARERS' DISPUTE

SETTLEMENT HOPED FOR

SUGGESTED DOMINION CONFERENCE.

.Hopes are entertained of a settlement being arrived at shortly in connection with the New Zealand Shearers and Shed Hands' dispute. Shearers are asking to be paid at the rate of 35s per 100, and sheep-owners have offered; 20s. The demands of individual unions have been heard by Councils of Conciliation in various parts of the Dominion, but no agreement has so far been reached:, To-day Mr. A. Cook, president of the New Zealand Workers' Union, with which organisation the shearers are affiliated, stated to a Post reporter that he hoped it would be possible to arrange a Dominion conference with the sheep-owners, at which a settlement might be~a(?reed upon without having to have recourse to,tile Arbitration Court. Mr. Cook said that the Otago and Southland and Gisborne and East Coast unions had yet to take their cases before Councils of Conciliation, after which it would be possible for the national organisation of the shearers to meet the sheep-owners of the Dominion in conference. "We did that before in. connection with the 1919 agreement," observed Mr. Cook. "In that year we were unable to arrive at any settlement at sittings of Councils of! Conciliation in various parts of the Dominion, but (finally a Dominion conference was arranged in Wellington and an agreement was reached. We are hopeful that a Bimilar thing will happen again in this case."