Royal Commission WATERFRONT INDUSTRY COMMISSION BIASSED, INQUIRY WITNESS SAYS

Wanganui Chronicle, 22 November 1950, Page 6

Royal Commission WATERFRONT INDUSTRY COMMISSION BIASSED, INQUIRY WITNESS SAYS

WELLINGTON, Last Night (PA). —A charge that th e Waterfront Commission had displayed bias in favour of waterside workers was made today by an employers’ witness before the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Waterfront Industry. The witness was Thomas Sydney Marchington, assistant general manager (industrial) of the New Zealand Shipping Company, Ltd., and a member of the Waterfront Industry Authority.

Mr Marchington said he considered the Waterfront Industry Commission system a most undesirable form of control of the waterfront industry, and, as a seml-Government department, it could be subject to political influence.

Mr Marchington was the first of 8 series of witnesses to be called by the port employers. He was in the witness box for the greater part of the day. All employers, he said, were agreed that the interposition of a ~hird party between the employers and the union was undesirable. It was very necessary that the employers should get as close to the union as possible, in order to see its view and discuss its problems. Political influence was almost Inseparable from the commission system, if the Waterfront Industry Commission had to be some form of Government department. He claimed employers should have control of thet administration of their own industry 7 , just as employers elsewhere had control of theirs. BIAS LED TO FAILURE. He alleged that there was bias on the part of the Waterfront Industry Commission. It was not necessarily political bias, but bias was there inescapably, and it had coloured the attitude of the commission in its policy cn disputes and led to failure on the part of the commission to maintain discipline. Mr Marchington said that thing* had reached such a state now that employers were not sure what would satisfy the union. He challenged certain figures in reports of the Waterfront Industry Commission on the rate of work on the waterfront and claimed that these were entirely misleading. He said also that under commission decisions astonishing amounts were being paid in risk money. He agreed that the waterfront had a high rate of accidents and that there would always be an element of risk, but he thought it would be found that the workers themselves were responsible for a lot of accidents through their own carelessness.

Mr Marchington also gave evidence .n support of the employers’ submissions on details of waterfront work and engagement of labour.