TRANSPORT FEDERATION

Otago Witness, Issue 3384, 22 January 1919, Page 41

TRANSPORT FEDERATION

TO REPLACE ARBITRATION COURT.

ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT OF BOARD

CHRISTCKURCH, January 17.

At a meeting under the auspices of the Transport Workers' Advisory Board, representatives were present from the railwaymen, the waterside workers, the seamen, the" drivers, and the traimvaymen. It was stated by Mr J. Roberts (Waterside Federation) that the objects of the board were to organise all transport workers into one federation, and to use that organisation for the benefit of each unit; to get an adequate return for labour, and to imErove working conditions and shorten the ours of labour. The board represented all sections, with the exception of the Locomotive Engineers and Firemen's Union, and it was believed that this union would affiliate within 12 months. There would have been serious industrial disputes but for the intervention of the Transport Federation. It • had been the means of getting several men reinstated after they had been ordered off the wharves by the military authorities. In connection with the recent Dunedin tramway dispute, the local union was unable to effect a settlement, but on the question being handed over to the Transport Federation a settlement was arrived at. The only people to-day who appreciated the Arbitration Court were the employers, and the Transport Advisory Board had been set up by tho workers to take its place. No one section of the affiliated workers would be able to enter a dispute without consult-

ing the others. The Transport Advisory Board was out to stop the formation of further craft unions. Other sections of industry were organised on craft lines, but the board asked them to group on industrial lines in order that they might bo able" to form an efficient national labour organisation that could speak with no uncertain voice for the whole of organised Labour in the oountry. One object it had in view for the future was to own and control the industries.

Mr Glover said that many forms of organisation had been adopted, and all had served their day. It was no use trying to keep an organisation in exktenoo when it no longer expressed the desires of the workers. They could not act by sentiment. One of their objects was to knock down the 18 affiliated unions and register one Waterside Workers' Union with a board in each port, the same aa the A.S.R.S. The Transport Federation ghould be composed of all workers in the particular' industry—namely, waterside workers, railwaymen, engine drivers, firemen and cleaners, seamen, tramwaymen. and drivers. The miners and the agricultural workeTs should link up with them and form the national council of Labour.