UNION’S CLAIM FAILS

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 March 1938, Page 12

UNION’S CLAIM FAILS

FORMER SECRETARY’S RIGHTS. [pee pbesb association.] AUCKLAND, March 10. Further evidence was heard! in the Magistrate’s Court in the claim by the Auckland and Suburban Local Bodies Labourers’ Industrial Union of Workers against its former secretary, Bernard Clews, for the return of a motor-car and bank books, or alternatively £230 and £lO damages, for their detention. The case, which opened a week ago, was resumed before Mr W. R. McKean, S.M. At the conclusion, the Magistrate (said .that the union had to act only through its executive officers, and these officers in turn had to be appointed according to the rules of the union. This had been pointed: out to this particular union in a recent Supreme Court decision, but there had been recurrences of actions which should not have been permitted by men upon -whom the need for acting, properly had been so impressed. At the election of officers before the dismissal of the defendant, non-members had been allowed to vote, and it was also absurd to suggest that members should be deprived of the right to require a secret postal ballot in the act. Since a general meeting might attract only a certain number of members, it might be considered desirable to have an expression of opinion from the whole of the union, but in this case such a request had been asked and ignored.

Mr McKean said he could not say in the circumstances that the men who claimed to be the executive really were the executive. The position, as he saw it, was that a person who had been elected at the general meeting and had been re-elected again and again over 20 years was entitled to show that the persons who had dismissed him had not been raised to the position according to the rules of ) the union. Judgment was given the defendant with costs.