RAILWAY MEN'S GRIEVANCES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 451, 9 March 1909, Page 4

RAILWAY MEN'S GRIEVANCES.

The men at the Petono workshops have so far received no satisfactory reply to their complaint that one result of the adoption of the Manawatu Hailway Company's employees has been the allotment to the newcomers of positions properly due to the older servants of the State. It appears that although the Minister for Eailways, or some responsible official, has promised that justice would be done, and although the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants has taken up the men's grievance, the position remains exactly where it was. At a meeting held yesterday, the complainants appointed a deputation to wait upon the Minister, and we may therefore hear early news of the Department's attention to the complaint. The men, as will be seen from our report of yesterday's meeting, have taken up a moderate and respectful attitude in the matter. They are firm, as befits men convinced of the justice of the cause, but they arc neither immoderate nor violent. What is of special interest in the meeting is the fact that it was called, not for tin; purpose of forcing the Minister's hand or framing peremptory demands, but in order to demonstrate the reality of the grievance and the seriousness of the desire for redress. It is very satisfactory indeed to find that the men havo so'strong a sonse of what is proper in a body of j

Stato employees. Although there is an obligation on practically all employees, under the Arbitration Act, to confine themselves to peaceful and orderly methods, there is a special obligation on Stato employees, irrespective of Arbitration Acts, to keep order and submit to discipline. But occasions will arise when this salutary rule presses hardly; cases in which a silent submission to discipline would only confirm and even intensify any want of fairness on the part of the governing authorities. Machinery docs exist for the adjudication of certain lands of disputes between the Railway Department and its employees, but the current grievance of the Petone hands does not appear to be a dispute, of that sort. The men have to rely very largely upon the extent to which simple considerations of equity govern the decisions of the Minister. In Me. Millar, there is reason to think, they have a Ministerial chief whose personal inclination is towards fair-deaiing in his Ministerial work. What is less certain, and at present seriously doubted, at any rate in Petone, is whether Me. MiLLAEis as ready as we should expect in a Minister controlling so large a body of men to give prompt and sympathetic attention to serious complaints. A Minister who gets into the habit of making concessions to the ■ State employees under his control only tardily and after pressure has been applied to him encourages in those employees a corresponding habit of pressing unreasonable demands; and that is a condition inimical to the interests of the service concerned and of the State as a whole. Unless the Minister is himself a champion of the principles of fair play, the principles of fair play will come to be disregarded by the employees. A prompt and equitable settlement of every, complaint, on the other hand, will encourage the preferment only of those demands for which the employees can advance a good case. The Minister has had amplo time to settle the affair at Petone, and he is acting most unwisely in keeping the men's irritation alive.