NO SETTLEMENT REACHED

Southland Times, Issue 23376, 7 December 1937, Page 8

NO SETTLEMENT REACHED

WAIANA STILL NOT MANNED TWO TIME-TABLE SHIPS DELAYED (United Press Association) AUCKLAND, December 6. No settlement has been reached in the labour dispute which began on the Auckland waterfront on Thursday. Only those ships on which labour was engaged before the trouble arose are being worked and some have not their full complement of labour.

The position has been aggravated by the arrival during the week-end of two overseas ships, an island trader and several coasters. The only call for labour at the Auckland Waterside Bureau this morning was for the Waiana but for the third time in succession it met with no response. The Waiana has been declared a “preference” ship, which means that until the vessel is manned fresh labour cannot be called for any other ship. A meeting was called this morning by the Port of Auckland Shipping and Stevedores’ Association, which is handling the position for the employers. Subsequent to the meeting a statement was made by Captain Lewis, chairman of the Port of Auckland Shipping and Stevedores’ Association. POSITION REMAINS THE SAME The statement said: “The position on the waterfront remains the same. At a meeting of the committee of the association this morning it was reaffirmed that as the rules of the bureau were agreed to both by the employers and the employees they must be adhered to. The action of the men engaged for the Waiana for 6 p.m. on Thursday in accepting their disks, and therefore engagement, and then deciding at an unauthorized meeting that they would not turn to until 8 a.m. the following morning, was entirely unconstitutional and this breaking of the rules cannot be tolerated. “It cannot be too strongly stressed for the benefit of the general public that the employers’ action is taken as a stand against unconstitutional measures of what they have every reason to believe is a small section of members of the Waterside Workers’ Union.” The vessels at present concerned in the dispute are the New Zealand Shipping Company’s passenger liners Rotorua and Rangitata, the Hamburg Amerika freighter Gera, the Port Line’s Port Hunter, the Union Steam Ship Company’s coaster Waiana and the Island trader Matua, the Westport Coal Company’s collier Canopus and a number of intercolonial coastal and provincial ships. The Rangitata and Rotorua are timetable ships carrying passengers and mails and the delay in port may mean that they will experience difficulty in maintaining their schedules. In addition the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company’s Waipawa and the Port Line’s Port Hobart are restricted in theii' cargo operations through having insufficient gangs. These together with the Port Chalmers, had engaged a certain amount of labour before the holdup occurred. TWO ARRIVALS TOMORROW Tomorrow the Huddart Parker liner Wanganella is scheduled to arrive from Sydney in the early afternoon and the British Phosphate Commission’s chartered vessel Homeside is listed to make port with a cargo of phosphates. Partly because of the trouble the berthage of these new arrivals will be a problem as those already in port have not been able to get away as soon as expected. In the case of the Wanganella the present tentative arrangement is to berth her in the place occupied by the Rangitata at Queen’s Wharf and to transfer the Rangitata to the Kairanga’s berth, also at Queen’s Wharf. No arrangements have yet been made for the Homeside. A serious aspect of the shipping holdup is that the wool stores are overflowing and because of the congestion at the Auckland railway station a start was made today to store wool in a shed under the main station building. Mr B. J. Marquest, president of the Auckland Woolbrokers’ Association, said that at least ten thousand bales were awaiting shipment and offerings for the January sales were arriving from all parts of the district. Unless the pressure was relieved by early shipments the farmers would have to be told to hold their wool and this would upset sale operations.