Half Newcastle Without Bread

Northern Advocate, 2 April 1946, Page 3

Half Newcastle Without Bread

(Rec. 1.30 p.m.)

SYDNEY, This Day

Half Newcastle is without bread, following the bakers' strike in protest at the action of the Cooperative Society in trying to break the unofficial zoning system. A compulsory conference of all bodies concerned has been cplled by the Conciliation Commissioner this afternoon. .

In the meantime scones and dampers are taking the place of bread, but housewives are being hampered by a shortage of flour and other ingredients.

The union fear is that a price-cutting war will follow abandonment of zoning. SHEARERS ALSO Strikes which have occurred among shearers in the Broken Hill district in support of the agitation for a 40-hour week have interfered with the shearing of 150,000 sheep. Mr R. C. Wilson, general manager of the Graziers’ Cooperative Shearing Company, said that Communists were attempting to disrupt industry in the hope of getting control of the Australian Workers’ Union.

In the Darling River area up to 5,000,000 sheep are shorn annually, so the number outstanding is small. “Communists have been spreading misleading reports about shearers' indignation meetings, which generally take the form of a few disgruntled Communists in hotel backyards,” said Mr Wilson. “The unions have been fighting attempts to disrupt shearing, which have taken the form of propaganda outbreaks in isolated, regions.”