OFFICE WORKERS’ UNION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19365, 1 July 1937, Page 15

OFFICE WORKERS’ UNION

REPLY TO CHALLENGE APPEAL COURT ARGUMENT (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. Further proceedings took place in the Appeal Court this morning in the case of the Otago and Southland Stock and Station Agents Clerical Employees’ Trade Union and others, as the plaintiffs, versus the judge and members of the Arbitration Court, the Otago Clerical Workers’ Industrial Union, and the registrar of industrial unions, as the defendants. The plaintiffs contend that clerical work is not an industry within the meaning of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, and that the defendant union is not a society or union within the meaning of the Actt. The plaintiff's are asking the court to quash the Otago clerical workers’ award and declare that the union is invalid.

The presentation of argument on behalf of the defendants was continued by Mr. 11. F. O’Leary, K.C. He continued the discussion of the crucial question as to whether the registrar of industrial unions had been justified in registering the defendant union.

Counsel said that this depended on the definition of the word “industry 1 in the Act. The occupation of a clerk was fittingly described by saying that lie was employed in the calling or employment of a clerk, just ns a driver working for a butcher, a carrier, or n baker would have his occupation correctly described as being employed in the calling or employment of a driver. The piurt of the section of the Act containing the words “any business, trade, manufacture or undertaking,” contended Mr. O’Leary might be regarded as specially applicable to an industry from the employer’s point of view. That was, they described the particular branch of industry in which an employer uses the labour of others.