EFFECT OF SETTLEMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18929, 29 January 1925, Page 9

EFFECT OF SETTLEMENT

ULIMAROA RECOMMISS'ONED.

LEAVES SYDNEY TO-MORROW

The settlement of the dispute with the seamen in Australia is of considerable interest to a large number of people who travel between the Commonwealth and New Zealand. The strike did not interfere to any extent with the cargo service

between the two countries, but there was always doubt as to how long the intercolonial passenger steamers would continue to run. There are five engaged—the Maheno, Marama and Ulimaroa in the Sydney-Welhngton-Auckland service, and the Moeraki and Manuka in the Mel-bourne-Wellington-South Island service. The Ulimaroa was drawn into the trouble at the commencement of the strike and has been lying idle at Sydney since January 3. On that date she was ready to leave Sydney for Wellington with mails and cargo and a full complement of passengers. Difficulty was experienced in getting a full crew, with the result that the sailing was cancelled and the ship was laid up. The next of the five steamers to become involved was the Moeraki, at Maibourne, where her crew were imprisoned for refusing to take the ship to sea. Fortunately, the other three steamers continued on in their respective services and minimised the delay to the travelling public.

The local office of the Huddart, Parker Company has received advice that the Ulirnaroa is being rccommissiortcd. She is scheduled to leave Sydney to-morrow with passengers, mails and cargo for Wellington, where she is due on Tuesday The vessel is also scheduled to leave Wei lington for Sydney on February 6, and Auckland for Sydney on February 20. No news has been received in Auckland as to when the Moeraki will resume. Although the Australian seamen have accepted the award of iho Federal Arbitration Court, which appointed specific picking-up places for crews, the troubles of the shipping industry cannot be said to have ended with the manning of the idle ships. As the cable messages indicate, the settlement with the seamen will in all probability re-open the dispute with the waterside workers, which has been latent during the suspension of the running of many of the ships. A feature of the maritime trouble all along has been the frequency of irritation stoppages affecting different sections of labour. First it was the Sydney Labour Bureau. The owners gsive way on that, and immediately a petty dispute, in which the ( Courfc declared that the men's attitude was absolutely untenable, regarding the payment of certain overtime on .some inter-State ships, assumed grave proportions, mixed up with a purely local dispute affecting certain State-owned vessels in West Australia, to which the union extremists contrived to give a wider aspect by causing it to hold up the entire shipping in the port of Fremantie. Signs of settlement in these disputes were followed by demands that the shipowners whose home ports are in Australia should be compelled to pick up their seamen at places specified by the union—in Sydney at the Communist Hall —instead of, as previously, at the wharves. Thiis point has now been settled by the Court upholding the owners. Then there were minor disputes which kept the pot of discontent boiling, and aimed at assuring that no sooner was the dislocation patched up hero than it would break out there. The next trouble, it is suggested, may arise out of the dispute regarding preference to members of the Returned Soldiers' Waterside Workers' Exchange. Some weeks ago an arrangement was mads between the owners and the men whereby the exchange was to b« abolished and its members were to be admitted to the Waterside Workers' Union. There they were to participate in the ordinary union preference. The ex-servicemen, however, refused to join the union and there the position stands. All of which means that the manning of the idle ships and the resumption of their running brings to the fore again the question of the employment of waterside labour to work them in the ports; and the watersider labourers have not yet settled their differences.