LOYALTY OF STRIKERS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18765, 23 July 1935, Page 7

LOYALTY OF STRIKERS

UNION COMES FIRST BOARD CHAIRMAN’S VIEW TRAMWAY CASE ECHO (Per Tress Association.) OHRISTCIIUKCn, this day. The recent dismissal of three anon from the traffic staff was mentioned at a meeting of the Tramway Board yesterday. The three men dismissed all belong to the group commonly described as the loyalists, in that they did support the Tramway Board as against the union in the tramway strike of 1932.

The report of the works and traffic committee -simply mentioned that to deal with the surplus of men three men had been dismissed. .Mr J. Mnthison, who was the president of the union at the time of the strike, and who is now a member of the board, said that the board had had nothing to do with the selection of the three men for dismissal. The chairman, the Rev. J. K. Archer, said that the selection of the men had been left entirely, to the management, which was instructed that the men -were to be selected regardless of their attitude to the strike. ( ‘lt rather amuses me to see how the press gloats over the word ‘loyalist,’ as if the men who remained on duty during the strike were loyal, and those who wont out were disloyal,” said Mr Archer.

“To whom were they loyal, and to whom were they disloyal? The first business of a working man in a time of a strike is to his fellow working men, ” he said. Mr Archer added that he was against strikes in general, if they could possibly could be avoided, but if there had to be a strike he thought it should be a straight-out dispute between employers and employed. He regarded as a traitor the working man who was not loyal to his fellows in such a time. If all the .workers had been loyal to their class in 1933 there would have been neither the strike nor the troubles that had since arisen from it.