UNION MEMBERSHIP

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 June 1939, Page 5

UNION MEMBERSHIP

WATERSIDERS’ APPLICATION

[per PRESS ASSOCIATION.]

AUCKLAND, June 19. A declaration that they were members with full rights of the New Zea-

land Waterside Workers’ Union, Auckland branch, was sought in the Supreme Court to-day, before Mr. Justice Ostler, by Horatio William Dixon and 22 others in an action asking an injunction requiring the union to give effect to such declaration.

The plaintiffs claimed that in April, 1937, they, and others, joined the union, paying the annual subscription. They were, however, denied access to all ordinary business meetings, and in May, 1938, the union denied the plaintiffs the right to renew their subscriptions, and had since maintained that the plaintiffs W’ere not members of the union. The defendant union denied that the plaintiffs were invited to join the union, and said they did not. pay their subscriptions, and consequently were denied access to meetings because they were not members, and that the renewals of subscriptions were refused for the same reason. Mr. Leary, for the plaintiffs, Sftid that, the plaintiffs were employed in the Colonial Sugar Company’s shed and had been invited to join the union, having first preference for work at Chelsea and second preference at the call in Auckland. They paid their subscriptions (30/-) for one .year, and regularly attended calls at Auckland for work. In 1937 the bureau system »vas instituted and his clients were not put on the bureau, but continued to be called from the union’s stand. When they tendered the next year’s subscription this was refused and they were told they had been disbanded.