A LEVY TO ASSIST STRIKERS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3550, 14 June 1912, Page 5

A LEVY TO ASSIST STRIKERS.

POSITION IN REGARD TO FEDERATION UNIONS DEFINED.

[PER PRESS ASSOCIATION.] WELLINGTON, June 13. Mr. J. Glover, secretary of the New Zealand Federation of Labor, to-day received the following legal opinion' from Mr. P. J. Oregon, attorney to the Federation: — “In answer to your inquiry this morning, I may state that I have noticed m the newspapers that certain! unions who are bound by awards have demurred to making a levy for Hie relief of the men _at Waihi on the ground that being bound by the Arbitration Act they would be guilty of an offence if they did so. I noticed an opinion expressed rather emphatically quite recently in one of the Wellington newspapers, the Auckland correspondent of which regretted ‘that a strong Government’ was not in office to punish the men who have ‘broken the law’ at Waihi. This is quite in accord with the standard of accuracy observed bv the great majority of the newspapers where the actions of working men are. in issue. The legal opinion is quite plain. A strike is unlawful only when the strikers are bound by an award or industrial agreement, that is to say, when they are members of an industrial union, and consequently under . the jurisdiction of the Court of Arbitration. The Waihi miners are not under the jurisdiction of the Court of Arbitration, and hence their strike is not an _ unlawful strike. Consequently it is not an offence for a. union, whether hound by an award of the Court or not, to donate funds for the relief of the men on strike.”