Grave Situation At Whangarei Port

Northern Advocate, 4 August 1949, Page 5

Grave Situation At Whangarei Port

A GRAVE situation has developed on the Whangarei waterfront, both at the Town Wharf and Portland, as a result of the Whangarei Waterside Workers’ Union decision to work a 44-hour week with no overtime, following the suspension of commission control.

The Union Company’s collier Kaimiro, which berthed at Portland on Saturday afternoon with 1250 tons of Westport coal, will piobably be delayed until this week-end. Under normal circumstances she would have been turned round in time to leave Portland on Tuesday, but the watersiders have only worked her on alternate days this week. When commission control operated non-unionists would have been engaged to work coastal ships at the Town Wharf if a collier was discharging at Portland. At the same time Portland employees, if required, would have been available to assist an- the Portland wharf. This week, however, neither of these alternate sources of labour has been employed, and the watersiders have made their own arrangements to suit themselves.

WEEK’S PROGRAMME. They would have worked the Kaimiro on Monday, if commission control had been operating, but instead they worked the coastal ship Ranginui and the Kaimiro was idle. On Tuesday they went to Portland and commenced discharging the Kaimiro’s cargo. They stopped on Tuesday afternoon, informed the Union Company’s representatives that they would not be available on the following day, and came back to Whangarei to work the Ranginui which had returned from Aucklsnd. She carried about 90 tons of general cargo which they discharged in quick time.; They loaded about 450 boxes of butter and the ship left at 2 p.m. As yesterday was polling day, they were entitled to up to two hours off on full pay tor voting. Finishing m 2 p.m., after working at a good speea all the morning, they had three hours off on pay. - _ , This morning they went out to Portland to resume on the Kaimiro, and tomorrow they will be back at Whangarei, leaving the collier idle again. At present it appears that the Kaimiro will be at Portland until the week-end if even the bulk of her cargo is to be unloaded. If the watersiders work the Ranginui tomorrow, is anticipated, they will possibly return to Portland on Saturday to work until noon.

REAL ATTITUDE There is some speculation in Whangarei regarding the watersiders’ real attitude towards commission control. It is known that they received numerous benefits from the commission and regretted considerably that the Minister of Labour (Mr McLagani had decided to suspend the commission. . . They felt they had a grievance because the Minister had penalised them, notwithstanding the fact that they had previously been willing to work overtime. For this reason they agreed, at a stop-work meeting a week ago, that they would observe a 44-hour week without, overtime.

The suspension of the commission has meant the loss of their guaranteed weekly wage of £4/3/3 net, but this week they will have worked five consecutive days which will bring their wage to abpve the minimum. CEMENT WORKS AFFECTED Cement production at Wilson’s (N.Z.) Portland Cement, Ltd., has already been seriously affected. The coal pile at the works is nearly exhausted, and it has become necessary to shut down one of the four kilns. A second kiln will probably go out of production tomorrow, reducing the works’ capacity by one-half. The works manager (Mr E. Leese) said this afternoon that the future outlook was not at all promising, with the prospect of further interference in production. He stated that the Kaimiro was the first-collier to berth at Portland for three and a half weeks. There had been an improvement in the supply of coal from the state mine at Kamo and the supply from this source had been sufficient to keep one and a half kilns operating.