AUSTRALIAN SLAUGHTERMEN.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14865, 12 September 1918, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN SLAUGHTERMEN.

AND THE COMING .SEASON-.

\. ' PRiOTEST FROM THE FREEZERS : UNION.

The slaughtering season will bo here again 'snorny, and with it wiil come one slaughtermen iToni. Australia. _ 'lho advent Oi: these workers was net viewed {avourablv by tlio -treeziag unions last year, and a decided stand iifis now been take'u up uy .tiie- Freezers' - Union judging by chc toilowing resolution paa'sed" uy ' the 'union a few days ago: 'I lift resolution reside as ioilows :— •'That "while iNew 'Zoaiand.men arc being conscripted Australians should not "be allowed to take their xMaces either on tho slaughtering board or in any branch of the freezing industry." I'lie ciiairman at the meeting at which this resolution was passed was in khaki. He was a married'man wlio bought suma land ia Hastings some time back, raised

n loan under tiie .v.lvances to Settlers .Ac-t and built and furnished.a home. ]\o\v, as one delegate at the meeting put it, the Government had taken him without voice or choice, put him into camp,. sep;irntod Him from his wife and broken up his home. At the same time single men were brought from Australia uhde v sa Fe conciuct with guarantees from the Minister for Internal Affairs that tisey are to be exempt from the military j law's of the country for six months".

l These men were filling the. places of New Zealand married men who were being divorced'-from their families and being sent to the front. A case was cited at the meeting. An Australian was given a. contract in one of the fellmqngery departments in the Wellington district, earning at the rate of £22 a fortnight. A man lie brought hvitn him from Australia earned £12 a fortnight..- At the time that his permit was about to expire the man earning £22 a fortnight sent over for a relative of his in Australia and this relative continued the work while the other man went back to Australia so as to evade

military service. Now this man--was coming back again at the beginning of the coming season and in the meantime the position was kept going by another Australian on a six-months' permit so that no New Zealander might jump so profitable a billet. .