AN IMPORTANT JUDGMENT

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 88, 13 December 1913, Page 7

AN IMPORTANT JUDGMENT

DISPOSAL OF U<v?OM FUNDS

|Ter Press Association.] Wellington, December 12

An important question, whether a union registered under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, and not under the Trades Union Act, can give part of its funds for the aid of families of men who are on strike, the men not being co-workers in any sense in the same industry as that of ;*]ie union that is registered, was decided In the Chief Justice (Sir Robert Stout) to-day. The union concerned was the Wellington Typographical Union, which some time ago made a vote of £IOO to the Waterside Workers' strike fund. The question at issue was answered by the Chief Justice as follows:—(a) It is not lawful for the defendant union to apply any of its funds for the purposes of assisting the unions mentioned in the proceedings, or their dependants, while members of rival unions are engage 1 in a strike. (1)) The union cannot make levies on its members for that purpose. In the course, of his judgment, His Honor, after citing the rules of the union, said the union must be one for the purpose of protecting or furthering the interests of workers in connection with the special industry of printing. H was not a general benevolent society, and it was not formed for the purpose of aiding workers in other industries. Tt plight be that it could assist even those on strike if they were printers, or engaged in the same branch of the printing industry as rule 15 provided, but'in His Honor's opinion, there being nothing in the Statute enabling a union t< assist workers on strike, at all event: outside the industry to which the members of the union belong, it could not be implied that it had that power.

Mr Justice Chapman concurred