HUNTLY MINES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 September 1942, Page 2

HUNTLY MINES

SECRET BALLOT TODAY ON QUESTION OF RESUMING WORK. MR WEBB'S COMPARISON WITH RUSSIA. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. A secret ballot on the question of resuming work is to be held today by all the miners involved in the Huntly dispute. The Minister of Mines, Mr Webb, said last night that the chairman of the Mine Workers’ Federation, Mr J. Devlin, and the secretary of the federation, Mr A. McLagan, had had a conference yesterday with the district executive, when a unanimous decision to hold the ballot was made. Mr Webb said he felt that the common sense of the miners would prevail and that there would be an overwhelming decision to resume work. All of the men employed in the Pukeriro mine, said the Minister, were being served with summonses for their breach of the law. Asked about the position of miners exempted from military service because of the essential nature of their work, the Minister said that miners were exempted because they . were providing coal. His recommendation to the Government was that if they preferred striking to working they should be given every opportunity to fight and be called up for service with the armed forces. Mr Webb said that when the country was faced with such serious war problems it had the right to expect a more helpful attitude from those engaged in an industry so vital to the nation’s war effort. The Government would not tolerate whether’ employer or worker, standing in the way of the nation’s war effort. The few industrial wreckers could expect no mercy as far as the Government was concerned, for every ounce of energy and every penny of wealth was needed in this great crisis. The Soviet workers were giving every ounce of their labour and blood for the preservation of their ideals; their heroic stand had been a great safetyvalve to civilisation. Every .man, woman and child should work as never before, and any side-stepping was out of the question. To hold up production was an insult to the brave comrades of the Soviet and a betrayal of the men fighting for our liberty.