TROUBLE WITH ENGINEROOM COMPLEMENT

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 25, 29 July 1922, Page 8

TROUBLE WITH ENGINEROOM COMPLEMENT

VESSEL'S SAILING CANCELLED BOTH SIDES STATED. A dispute arising over the engine-room complement oi the Union Steam Ship Company's intercolonial steamer Paloona has delayed the vessel at Wellington, and at present her departure for Melbourne, via, Lyttelton, Dunedin, and Bluff, is somewhat indefinite. The following statement was made today by Mr. W. T. Young : (general secretary of the New Zealand Federated Seamen's Union in reference to the matter: — "In the first place,": said Mr. Young, "the manning schedule of the Shipping Act provides.that each ship carry not less.than a certain number of men in her •deck and engine-room departments^ Under that, in the deck department, the Paloona must carry not less than nine able' seamen and one ordinary seaman or boy. In the engine-room department, nine firemen, three trimmers, and three greasers. That is the legal minimum number. For some considerable time, she lias been carrying in the deck department a bosun, nine able seamen, one ordinary seaman, and one boy. In the engine department, twelve firemen, six trimmers, and three greasers. That is the number of men signed when the articles are being taken. out, and was the number proposed to be signed yesterday. The men hold that they take on a job with the knowledge that there : is to be a certain number of each rating in each department, and they contend that tile number ■ stated when the articles are entered into, is the contract they make with the master- of a -ship. In view of attempts having been' made recently to reduce the manning o£ ships in either departments, irrespective of the number signed when the articles have been entered into, and particularly ■in view of the Wtikatu case at Christehurch on the 20th July, in which one of the sailors was fined £5 with costs for taking part in an alleged^strike under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, the men contend that their position on the articles is not safe, and therefore request that a clause be put on the articles that will conserve to thenmights anticipated when they undertake to sign the articles of a ship."