AUSTRALIAN STRIKE.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18233, 18 November 1924, Page 14

AUSTRALIAN STRIKE.

Q THE WATERSIDE TROUBLE. ORIGIN OF THE DISPUTE. • - The real bone of contention in connexion with the present Australian waterside -workers' strike is the Shipping Labour Bureau in Sydney. In 1917, during the most anxioha days of the war, a great industrial upheaval was brought about, and the Waterside "Workers'. Federation refused to. load the ships, resulting. in vital supplies for tho Australian troops abroad being held up. It protracted a bitter struggle, and the New So\ith "Wales Government broke the : strike. To do this it had to call for volunteer labour, and those who responded included all sections of the community—University students, squatters, and professional men working alongside labourers. The Government promised its protection to all loyalists who desired to continue in the jobs that they were given, after the settlement of the strike, and all such men, so' far as waterfront work was concerned, were enrolled in what was known as the Shipping Labour .Bureau. Ever since then nearly all the work on the waterfront in Sydney has be.en distributed among members of this bureau. A Bombshell Judgment.

Tho union, for its action in the strike, was de-registered in New South Wales. As a result of long effort, however, it recently" regained its status, and by a sensational judgment of the High. Court, of Australia, it has been able to assert, its. right to a certain degree of preference in work for its members. First preference goes to returned soldiers, \yhether members of tlie .union or not, but after such applicants are exhausted the union members can claim preference. The - judgment was_ a bombshell to the Shipping -Labour Bureau. The union had taken its own steps to ensure that no members of the bureau should gain admission to its ranks, thus all members of the bureau who were not returned soldiers were thrown out' of employment, it being illegal to- give them preference before members of the union. Both the New South Wales Government and the Commonwealth- Government voted considerable sums to the loyalists, wRo were thus deprived of their work, altogether about £IO,OOO being distributed in compensation. But still -the Waterside Workers' Federation had nos obtained nearly all it wanted. Since the big strike the' bureau had been adding to ■its membership as vacancies occurred by admitting returned soldiers, and it was found that these were sufficiently numerous to carry on the work with only casual help from members . of the union. That is the root of the present trouble. The union desires to force shipowners to abolish the bureau altogether. This the shipowners will not do. So the federation has decided upon a process of irritation tactics throughout the Commonwealth. Strike Against the Law. The Australian newspapers,' , except those demoted expressly to. the. cause of the unions, unanimously condemn the impudence. of a strike aimed against the law, and demand that salutary action shall be taken to prove pnee and for all that no union can toss the bauble-faced. penny of constitutional and'direct, action with impunity. Having gained all they could from the Court by securing the exclusion of all except returned men from the" bureau, and thus : at last displacing union, it is pointed .out,'now resorts to the loyalists of the";-1917 ' strike, the direct action for. what, it knows no C6jirt could ever grants -