MORE SHIPPING TROUBLE AFLOAT

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3288, 6 March 1926, Page 9

MORE SHIPPING TROUBLE AFLOAT

Seamen Ordered to Remain Ashore

OWNERS MAKING IT FIGHT TO FINISH

A crisis lias been reached in the coastal shipping trade, the Seamen’s Union having ordered its members to leave the coastal ships, and the seamen liavlng given twenty-four hours’ notice on the slilps in the port of Sydney.

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SYDNEY. March 5,

The coastal steamship owners are standing Arm, and are resolved to make the shipping trouble a final trial of strength. It is believed that the seamen have received an assurance from the watersiders that tney will suuport the action taken by the seamen. As the result of the decision about 400 seamen and 800 watersiders will be thdown out of work. No Conciliation. A motion that a conference should be held with the owners was defeated by a seamen’s meeting, and it was agreed that the strike should not be declared off unless the owners undertook to pay the seamen wharf labourers’ rates for doing wharf labourers’ work. The Union of Cooks and has also refused duty on ships manned by volunteers. Issue Settled Last August. The secretary of the Coastal Steamship Owners’ Association says that the very question at issue in the present strike was raised by the Seamen’s Union representatives in Melbourne prior to the agreement reached in August last The owners refused to consider an alteration in the award, and the representatives of the Union therefore abandoned their claim for an alteration, and on the good faith of this a settlement was effected. A message of March 4 stated that a meeting of the Seamen's Union decided that unless the owners grant their demand for the same rates for working cargo as are paid to waterside workers, they will give twentyfour hours’ notice of their refusal to man the ships working under the coastal agreement and make the coastal strike general. The Illawarra Company was compelled to employ volunteer labour at the wharf to unload the cargo of one of its vessels which returned with a volunteer crew. ALL BLACK, EMERGENCIES PLAYING THE GAME. (Received Friday 8.45 p.m) SYDNEY, March 5. All coastal vessels are now declared black by the seamen and watersiders, but vounteers continue to enrol in sufficient numbers to ensure the normal service being maintained.