NEW SHIPPING LINE

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 March 1926, Page 5

NEW SHIPPING LINE

SOUTHAAIPTON TO SYDNEY. (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association., LONDON, March 4. Tlie Daily Express understands that the Commonwealth, is seeking the British Government’s approval of an important shipping scheme, aiming at speeding up communications as well as negotiating with a private group that is proposing to form a new company with a capital of ten millions sterling, to build seven ships of 24,000 tons each, designed to make the voyage from Southampton to Fremantle in twenty-live days. If this scheme is adopted, the Commonwealth will give the new Company a contract for the carriage of mails, the transit time for which will be reduced by five days each way, as compared with the present Peninsula and Orient services. I’he new company would also carry emigrants. 'l'lie proposed route is Southampton, Genoa, Suez Canal, Bambay and Colombo. The new ships would have cold storage equipment of the most modern type, enabling Australia to compete with South America in the chilled meat trade.

AUSTRALIAN DI SPUTE. SYDNEY, Al arch 4.' At a meeting of the Seamen’s Union it was decided, that unless the owners grant their demand for the same rates for working the cargo as are paid to she waterside workers, they will, give twenty-four hours’ notice of their refusal to man any of the ships working under the coastal agreement, and thus make the ocastal strike general. The Illawarra Company to-day was compelled to employ volunteer labour at the wharf to unload the cargo, of one of its vessels which returned with a volunteer crew. TROUBLE SPREADING SYDNEY, March 5. A crisis has been reached in the coastal shipping trade, the seamen’s union having ordered its members to leave the coasfal ships, and the seamen having given twenty-four hours’ notice on the ships in port. Coastal steamship owners are standing firm, and are resolved to make it a final trial of strength. It is believed that the seamen received an assurance from the watersiders that they will support the action taken by the seamen, and as a result of the decision about four hundred watersiders will be thrown out,of work. A motion that a conference should be held with the owners was defeated at the seamen’s meeting, and it was agreed that the strike should not be declared off unless the owners under took to pay the seamen wharf labour ers’ rates for doing wharf labourers’

work. Union cooks and stewards have also refused duty on the ships manned by volunteers. The secretary of the Coastal Steamship Owners’ Association, says that the very question at. issue in the present ijtrike was raised by the Seamen’s Union representatives in Melbourne, prior to an agreement reached in August last. The owners refused to consider an alteration in the award. The representatives of the Union therefore abandoned the claim for an alteration and on the -good faith of this, a settlement was effected. AVAITOMO LAID UP. AUCKLAND. March 4. The steamer AVaitomo is to be laid up indefinitely- and the crews have been given notice. Some of the stokehold crew still refuse to sail unless a new cook is provided, and this demand the Union Company firmly declines Io grant . As no sol tiemen I in m pim-pect. the Company -decided to lay up the vessel.