DECISION REAFFIRMED
DRIVERS’ STOP-WORK MEETING STATEMENT BY UNION PRESIDENT “We are bound by the National Executive’s decision to hold a stopwork meeting, and unless the employers are prepared to conciliate before January 28, that meeting will be held,” said Mr A. W. Milne, president of the Otago Drivers’ Union, in reply to a statement which appeared in the Daily Times yesterday, by Mr D. S. Lough, a former executive member of the union.
“At a meeting of the assessors and advisers, held after the deadlock in the Conciliation proceedings in Wellington, it was plainly evident that the unrest prevailing among drivers working under Part 2 of the drivers’ award in most districts required some adjustment,” Mr Milne said. “The employers’ assessors refused to negotiate and they claimed for a 52hour, six-day week to be worked in spans of 11 hours in one day for five months of the year,” he< said. “Time over 40 hours in any week to be paid back by time off during the following seven months of the year, and time worked on Sundays, to be paid back at double time off, was, in the drivers’ assessors' opinion, provocative and prevented any possibility of agreement,” he added. Although he was not present at the union meeting on Tuesday, it appeared that Mr Lough had' been correctly informed, Mr Milne continued.
“It is true,” he said, “ that the motion endorsing the national executive’s decision was carried with four dissentients but the leader of them is noted for his ability to see clearly through the employers’ spectacles. Mr Lough’s short period on the executive of the Drivers’ Union and his inexperience in conciliation proceedings render him incompetent to give a sound judgment on the matter in dispute. “It is plainly evident that members condemning the national executive's decision have no knowledge of the abominable conditions endured by country drivers, otherwise they would be valiantly fighting for these unfortunate men to gain conditions comparable to their own,” he concluded.
DECISION REAFFIRMED
Otago Daily Times, Issue 26963, 24 December 1948, Page 8
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