Union Chiefs Deplore Terms Employed By The Prime Minister

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22915, 6 April 1949, Page 8

Union Chiefs Deplore Terms Employed By The Prime Minister

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, April 6. A challenge to the Prime Minister to name any occasion on which the union had broken any undertaking given on behalf of the union since the establishment of the Waterfront Industry Authority is contained in a reply from Mr. H. Barnes and Mr. T. Hill on the New Zealand Waterside Workers’ Union to the statement of Mr. Fraser today.

Messrs Barnes and Hill said: “We deplore the language used by the Prime Minister which we think most people will agree is most unbecoming to put it mildly.

“We say with real regret that the onerous duties imposed on the Prime Minister in recent years have at last apparently taken their toll and warped his sense of values. Challenge Issued

“We challenge him to name any occasion on which we have broken any undertaking given on behalf of the union since the establishment of the Waterfront Industry Authority. All the Prime Minister's abuse of officials of our union will not cover up the real issue, that is, that the Minister of Labour and the Government have, by their precipitate statement of April 1, clearly revealed the correctness of the union’s charge made before the Mountpark tribunal that the Waterfront Commission was a smokescreen behind which the real waterfront controller, the Minister of Labour, operated.

“The Minister of Labour and 1 the Government, with their letter of April 1, placed themsedves in an untenable position from which their abuse will not extricate them.

“Apart from this we feel that this situation is additional proof of what a lot of people in New Zealand already know, namely, that the Government, by one means or another, is fiat out to lift the scalps of any workers’ representatives not prepared to play the role of lickspittles and stooges to the party machine.”