CANTERBURY ATTITUDE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27569, 11 December 1950, Page 6

CANTERBURY ATTITUDE

Call For Stop-work Meeting PA CHRISTCHURCH, Dec. 10. The convening of the biennial conference of the national union immediately to canalise discontent about the amount of the wage increase granted by the Railway’s Industrial Tribunal and to organise for uniformity in the union’s aims was requested today by the Canterbury branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants at the biggest meeting of railwaymen ever held in Christchurch. The branch will request the conference to instruct all its members to adhere rigidly to the 40-hour week and to organise a general stop-work meeting of all members one day in January. It will also

be asked to withdraw the union from the jurisdiction of the tribunal so that negotiations can be made directly with the department and the Government.

“A proposal to hold a stop-work meeting was abandoned for only one reason,” said the chairman of the branch, Mr T. H. Bryce, and the secretary, Mr A. B. Grant, in a statement after the meeting. “The reason was that because of the peculiarities of their working conditions one section of the branch would have been penalised by the loss of certain statutory days because of the break in the continuity of their employment.” The statement said that after the recent wage increases in other industries the employees in which would also participate in the general wage order, the branch considered that even though railwaymen would participate in the general order the “ insulting ” decision of the tribunal would place them in a worse situation, from a wages point of view, than that which the tribunal was supposed to rectify. "The. branch is determined that the wages claims of the men shall be carried forward,” the statement said.