RELIEF WORKERS

Wairarapa Daily Times, 10 May 1932, Page 5

RELIEF WORKERS

STRIKE IN WELLINGTON. AGAINST RATES OF PAY. WELLINGTON, Monday. Four or five gangs on relief left their jobs to-day as a protest against the new scale of relief rates of pay. This afternoon several hundred men met in the Basin Reserve and decided to strike. A number of police were present and Commissioner Wohlman also paid a visit. There were several speakers, most of whom suggested the formation of a relief workers’ union independent of the relief workers’ section of the. General Labourers’ Union and of the Unemployed 'Workers’ Movement, which one speaker claimed was but camouflage for the Communist Party. No finality was reached upon this point, but a large majority declared in favour of a strike. A committee of action was set up to meet in tlie Trades Hall this evening to consider ways and means and to report to a meeting to be held in the Basin Reserve to-morrow. A deputation had gone to interview the Prime Minister and tl)e Minister of Employment, and the meeting awaited its report. It was later stated that the representatives had been unable to see either Mr ForbcS or Mr Coates, but that Mr R. Semple had arranged a deputation to- the Unemployment Board, and that the result would be announced at to-morrow’s meeting. A later message stated that the unemployed decided to strike against the payment of rent and the levy as a protest against the new relief work scale of wages, and not to strike against work. —(P.A.)