AUCKLAND BUILDING DISPUTE PAY-OUT

Grey River Argus, 1 March 1949, Page 5

AUCKLAND BUILDING DISPUTE PAY-OUT

AUCKLAND, Feb. 28

Payments from the Carpenters’ Union's “lock-out fund” to its unemployed members will be made on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The stop-work meeting of building trades employees, to have been held at Carlaw" Park on Wednesday to discuss the carpenters’ dispute, has been postponed indefinitely. Representatives of seven unions, including a number outside of the industry, which have expressed sympathy with the carpenters, met today to review the progress of the dispute. They decided that since other sections of the building industry were not faced with wholesale dismissal, the proposed mass meeting be postponed. They agreed that those builders, whose supplies have been stopped because they refuse to dismiss their carpenters, be invited to make contact with the appropriate union so that action can be taken.

Yesterday the case for the carpenters’ go-slow action against the builders was stated at a public meeting attended by about 700 men and women in Myers Park. The national secretary, of the Carpenters’ Union, Mr R. Stanley, said there were three possible solutions. The Government could set up a tribunal, and if that were done, the carpenters would call off their go-slow action provided the master builders called off their “lock-out”. Second, the Government could take action against the carpenters; and third, another conference could be held between the carpenters and the employers. Mr Stanley said the Auckland carpenters were standing firm. The executive of the Bricklayers Union has decided to make no recommendation to union members about the carpenters’ dispute.