POWERS OF A UNION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5729, 26 October 1905, Page 5

POWERS OF A UNION.

EFFECT OF LABOUR LEGISLATION. THE COLONY’S SPECIAL POSITION. PRESS ASSOCIATION. LYTTELTON, October 25. Xij_ the Lyttelton Magistrate’s Court to-day. Hr Bishop, S.M., gave judgment for the defendant union With costs £3 Is in tho case of Hansen v. tho Lyttelton Stevedores’ Union. Hansen had been suspended and precluded from working on the Lyttelton wharves for a month, because he went across seeding on the Peninsula in February, contrary to the rule of the union providing that no member shall work for anybody or person other than the Canterbury Stevedoring Association without a permit from the union. The Stevedoring Association, in .return for this, agrees not to employ outside labour while members of the union are available. Tho plaintiff relied mainly on tho English case. Gibbon v. the National Amalgamated Labourers’ Union, in which it was .held that a union interfering with plaintiff’s common law rights to disnos© of his labour according to his will, was guilty of a tort. Tho Magistrate said tho legal conditions governing labour in England were entirely different to what they were under tno special legislation in New Zealand. He held that the union was not acting unlawfully, and had the necessary statutory power to make the rules under which it had acted.