The Dominion 6, 1909 SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 1909. EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 449, 6 March 1909, Page 4

The Dominion 6, 1909 SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 1909. EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE.

Two items of news, appearing respectively on> Thursday and yesterday, illustrate very remarkably tho extent of the change which has been taking place in the official Labour view of the workman's status and the relations that should subsist between an employer and his employee. The first item is a cable message from London relating tho soquel to a decision by tho Alliance Assurance Company that any new clerk entering its service will bo obliged, as a condition of his employment, to join the Territorial Army. To noarly everybody this novel decision will be no less pleasant than surprising. Wo have all been accustomed to regard mercantile circles in Great Britain as tho last place in which to look for either innovation or imagination, the last place in which to find active patriotism admitted as a working business rule. If all the companies employing young men followed the lead of the Alliance Assurance Company, Mr. Ealdmte would experience little difficulty in maintaining his Territorial Army, and the gain to British national spirit and to British manhood would be enormous. This, however, is not the view takon by the Labour leaders in the House of Commons. The sequel to the announcement by the Alliance Company was a volley of indignant questions by Radical members of the House, and a notice of motion condemning Mil. Haldane's approval of what is called "a specious form of conscription." Our second item of nowsis a telogram from Auckland to the offect that the Huntly Miners' Union has condemned tho action of the Employers' Federation in rewarding the four officials who remained at 'their posts during the recent mining trouble, the Union's basis of condemnation being its opinion that "while tho Arbitration Act makes it penal for unionists to assist their fellows in time of trouble, employers should not be permitted to bribe men to oppose unionist principles"! l ,

Tho resemblance between the attitude of the Radical members of the Houso .of Commons and tho attitude of the Huntly Miners' Union willappear on a moment's reflection. Amongst the "equal rights of man" affirmed by the British Labour leaders is the worker's precious right of refusal to defend his nativo land. Anything, thorefore, that savours of an attempt to coerce, or even to persuade, men to equip themselves for their first duty as a citizen is utterly hateful to the thoroughgoing Radical. But the protest of the Radicals against tho Alliance Company's patriotic action is much more than a protest against conscription, "specious" or otherwise. It is a protest against the right of a private company to fix the terms upon which it will offer employment. If the motion condemnatory of Me. Haldane means anything, it means that the Labour organisations deny the right of an employer to require a now omployee to do something in the interests of the nation as a condition of his employment. For if there is nothing objectionable to Labour in tho Company's way of managing its business, why condemn Me. Haldane for approving it? The attitude of tho protestants, therefore, resolves itself into this: that they dispute, from their theory of the rights of men seeking work, the right of a private employer to name tho conditions which a would-be employee, upon whom there Is no compulsion of any kind, must obey if he is to obtain a position. If they could do so, of course, the Labour members would procure legislation prohibiting private persons and firms from burdening their offer of emplbyment with the condition objected to. The fact that tho condition specified imposes sacrifice on the employer's part, as well as that of tho omployec, because a portion at least of the military training provided for will necessarily detach the employee from his offico duties, counts for nothing. Organised Labour in England, that is to say, holds the same opinions as organised Labour in New Zealand regarding tho privileges of the employee. Tho doctrino appears to be that the employer exists for the use of the worker—that he is a kind of gift of Nature, like sunlight and water and air, and must remain as passive. The resemblance between the Labour members and the Huntly Miners' Union is now quite clear. The difference is only one of degree, tho advantage lying with tho Union. The employer, we are to understand, is not merely to obey a law which, professing to constrain both parties equally, constrains the worker not at all, while it muet yield him all its benefits.

Of course the Union'B contention is very grotesque. There is no kind of analogy betweon the action of a Union ■which affords pecuniary aid to another Union engaged in breaking tho law, and the action of an employer in bestowing a pecuniary reward upon a workor who refrains from violating cither the letter or the spirit of tho law. One has only to state tho Union's argument to destroy it. But it would be foolish to leave the question there, overlooking the significance of the Union's resolution as a commentary upon the attitude of the Labour organisations towards the relations bctweon employers and employees. That organised Labour should come to the view that the employer has no rights whatever as against tho employee—we do not think we overstate the case—is not a. natural development at all. Such a preposterous—and ultimately, so far as Labour itself is concerned, euch a ruinousdoctrine could never take root without

encouragement of an authoritative kind. In Great Britain trades-unionism has already received a legislative charter of special and'exclusive privileges, not enjoyed by any other class, in the Trades Disputes Act. In New Zealand the wonder is almost that trades-unionism has.not gono further than it has gone in view of the mass of legislation that has been passed to raise Labour into a caste more haughty and more highly-privileged than tho Manchus in China. In both countries the legislature is responsible for the fashion in which Labour bemuses itself. He is no true friend of the worker who encourages the modern diseased view which trades-unionism takes of industrial relations. Society simply cannot go on under tho doctrine that the employer of labour has no rights as against the employee, nor any original rights, ,and it is upon the workers that the practical demonstration of this truth will in the long run fall most heavily.