MAORI SHEARERS AND UNIONISM

Te Ao Hou, December 1957, Page 51

MAORI SHEARERS AND UNIONISM Sir. I was very interested to read your article on “Shearing in Hawke's Bay”, based on a talk with Mr R. Tutaki who has since unfortunately died. The first reference I have seen to unionism among Maori shearers is a report in July, 1896, that the N.Z. Workers' Union, a predecessor of the present N.Z.W.U. had distributed literature in Maori. That N.Z.W.U. had a branch at Hastings but the whole organisation went out of existence before the end of the century. Shearers' unions were revived in the South Island in 1900 but in the Wellington Province not until 1906. As you mention in your article. Mr Tutaki joined the Wellington union in the year it was founded In 1909, existing shearers' unions combined o form the N.Z. Shearers' and Woolshed Employees' Union, and in the middle of 1910, M. Laracy, the national secretary of the organisation went to the Poverty Bay area where he formed the Gisborne and East Coast Shearers' and Woolshed Employees' Union. The union comprised mainly Maori shearers. Its president was Raihania Rimitiriu (presumably the Raihania mentioned by Mr Tutaki), its secretary James K. Morgan, also a Maori, of Muritai. Morgan usually represented the Gisborne union at the National conferences and was elected a vice-president of the N.Z. Shearers' Union in 1910. Membership of the Gisborne union at first fluctuated between 200 and 300 but jumped to 699 in 1914. In that year the total membership of the New Zealand union was 4093 of whom 1000 were Maori shearers. Out of the N.Z. Shearers' Union, by 1919, evolved the present N.Z. Workers' Union. In 1920 it was challenged by the employer-sponsored Mataara Maori Shearers' Association and in order to fight this threat it was decided to put a Maori organiser on the road. Mr Tutaki was appointed organiser and was successful in defeating the rival organisation. In 1925, a Maori shearer from the Gisborne area, Mr Hiwi Maynard, was elected to the N.Z.W.U. executive. As regards the attitude of Maori shearers to unionism, I can do no better than quote from a report of Mr James Whyte. N.Z.W.U. organiser in the Gisborne area, of June. 1925: “The Maori shearing gangs,” reported Mr Whyte, “support the N.Z.W.U. financially better than the pakehas. This has been my experience as an organiser for the last five years. I always get a better enrolment in the Maori sheds—a large percentage on the average number of sheds visited … The Maoris may not be very militant members—BUT THEY DO BECOME MEMBERS, and provide the necessary cash to make it possible to carry on as a union.” H. Roth