THE SYDNEY STRIKE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 260, 27 July 1908, Page 6

THE SYDNEY STRIKE.

New Zealand has a special interest in strikes just now, but even if wo wcro not in something like the position of a battlescarred warrior hearing reports of a distant war, tho great tramways strike in Sydney would compel attention hero for its own intrinsic interest. The dislocation of the transit accommodation of {Sydney is a very serious affair, as will be realised when it is. Stated that the system, which is owned by the State', carries about 140,000,000 passengers annually in tho mdtropolitan ai'ca, that the annual mileage is 16,000,000, and that nearly half a million sterling is paid in wages to the four thousand odd men', employed. The present troublo has arisen out of the hatred of tho men for tho system of espionage," set as a check upon the conductors, a system which the authorities consider absolutely necessary, fpr .the detection of dishonest employees. The Tramway Employees' Union brought the matter to a head la3t week by passing a resolution demanding the immediate abolition.of the dctcctivc system and the reinstatement of a certain dismissed conductor. At tho meeting at wliich this resolution was carried there was great excitement, and it was urged that a strike should follow the Government's refusal of the demands contained in the ultimatum. The men struck on .Friday last, and the Government and Commissioners have refused, to enter into any negotiations or make any promises until the men. return to work. •

The course of the strike will be watched with much attention here, for reasons quite apart from the natural interest that attaches to such a very serious affair. ,lt was only the other day that the Industrial Disputes Act came into force, with its very drastic provisions for the fining and imprisonment of strikers, liy a singular stroke of irony, .New South Wales adopted the repressive elements of the New Zealand Arbitration Act just as New Zealand discovered that those elements were worthless. An amusing featuro of the second reading debate on the Industrial Disputes .Bill was noted by lis at the time. That debate took place during the currency of the .Blackball strike, and its most singular feature was the unanimity of members, otherwise sharply at variance, upon the transcendent merits of the New Zealand law. in speech after speech the perfection 'of the .New Zealand . Act was treated as an axiomatic fact! We shall b.e interested tb see exactly how the Government will deal with the men. The Premier, Mr. Wade, who seems to differ a good deal from our own Government, preferring to see a trouble through rather than resort to all kinds of shifts and evasions of duty, evidently relies upon tlve precedent of tho Victorian railway strike in May, 1903, when, after six days' rebellion, the men> surrendered unconditionally to the Government. The (Sydney tramways employees evidently rely upon obtaining •public support. At the first mass meeting, one speaker said that " if they held a meeting in tho,Town iiall to-morrow, and. invited the public to attend, the public would, he with them.to. a man." 13ut tho feelings of a public deprived of its means of getting to work were better apprehended by another speaker, who declared that " they should remember that they would get nothing from public sentiment, except what they could-force from it." Whatever tho morits of the men's case may be, tho public is certain to support the Government, the average man's recognition of the impropriety t)f stand-and-deliver tactics being assisted to clearnoss by : tho inconvenience which he is suffering, it is worth noting that one of the most violent of the strike advocates quoted with approval the action of the Auckland men, and it is highly /probable that some part in emboldening the (Sydney rebels was played by the attitude of tho Now Zealand authorities towards the Auckland trouble. .The Sydney, strike should be of valuo in indicating the temper of the public towards its servants whon they put a pistol to the head of their employers, and not only the temper of the public, but its power when it is roused.'