NAVAL FUEL SHIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20722, 15 November 1930, Page 10

NAVAL FUEL SHIP.

REDUCTION IN CREW. OBJECTION MADE BY MEN.AGREEMENT TO SIGN ON. Owing to the manning scale on tiie Admiralty oil tanker Nucula having been reduced, tho new crew for the vessel refused to sign ori at tlie Government Shipping Office yesterday morning. The matter was discussed during tho day, and they signed in the afternoon. The Nucula runs under the auspices of the Naval Department and is utilised as a store ship to supply oil fuel for the New Zealand cruisers Dunedin and Diomede. Periodically the vessel goes to San I'edro to obtain further supplies of oil fuel for the warships and she is to be despatched on Monday morning. Since the Nucula arrived from her last trip seven months aco tho Naval Department has reduced the vessel's manning scale by three able seamen, two oilers and one steward. The reduction in tho vessel's personnel was the subject of a deputation representing the Federated Seamen's Union which waited on the Minister of Defence, the Hon. J. G. Cobbe, on October 30. The deputation asked the Minister that the reduction of crew be not made owing to the amount of unemployment among seamen. The Minister undertook to consider the matter but he stated that the reduction in manning had been made in 'the interest of economy and that his advisers in the Naval Department had informed him that some of the seamen employed on the Nucula at sea were superfluous and there was no work for them to perform. Representatives of the Auckland branch of the Seamen's Union and the Cooks and Stewards' Union interviewed the Minister in Auckland last Tuesday and were told that the reduction had been decided upon. At ten o'clock yesterday morning the men who had been chosen to join the Nucula demurred at the decrease in the manning scale and refused to sign the articles of agreement. Later the matter was fully discussed by the men and the union officials, with the result that the men returned to the shipping office and signed on at four o'clock in the afternoon.