SEAMEN’S STRIKE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26608, 3 November 1947, Page 5

SEAMEN’S STRIKE

MORE SHIPS AFFECTED CAUSES OF GRIEVANCE Rec. 9.45 p.m. LONDON, Nov. 1. The unofficial Merseyside strike has spread to London and Manchester. About 200 men from about five ships stopped work in Manchester. At the London docks pickets persuaded seamen to leave nine ships in sympathy with the seamen striking at Liverpwl and other provincial ports. The ships at London from which the seamen walked off were the Orient City, Loch Ryan Port Campbell, Wanderer, Beaver Glen, Taranaki. Argentina Star, Hillcrest Park and Beaver Lake The police are preventing strikers from entering the docks and approaching the crews of ships still unaffected, but pickets are meeting the crews'as they come ashore.

More than 23 coasters and severa: large ships have sailed from Merseyside since yesterday, men being smuggled past the pickets to make up the deficiencies in the crews. The strikers say they will strike until the present system of engagement is abolished and the pool system for all seamen resumed. They also demand 80 per cent, of their wages while awaiting a ship, a queue .system ashore obliging each man to take his turn foi a job, and the abolition of the present training scheme, which, they say, allows a company to send trainees to sea at low rates, thereby displacing fullypaid men.