The Dominion. TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1910. TRADESUNIONS ANDTHELAW

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 908, 30 August 1910, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1910. TRADESUNIONS ANDTHELAW

"A sensation," we are told in a cable message printed to-day, "has been caused in Labour circles" in America by a Supreme Court decision that "a Labour union ordering a strike or enforcing the closing of works violates the law." This news would be of deep interest at any time, especially to people- in this part of the world, but it is doubly interesting coming at u time when, as a/result of the House of Lords' in the famous Osborne case, the limits of the freedom of action of trades unions are being , widely discussed. The New York decision, which may he subjected to review by the Federal Supreme Court, sharply contracts the liberty of the unions, which have' lately considered themselves seriously injured by Mr. Taft's defeat of the proposal that the Attorney-General' should be debarred from' enforcing the Sherman Act against the promoters of labour boycotts.' Although now it seems obyious enough that the ordering of a strike is as much a "restraint of trade" as.the maintenance of a boycott, we do not think this new blow at the unions was deduced as a possible corollary to the /illegality of boycotting. Compared with this destructive judgment the Osborne judgment seems to.be quite a mild restraint upon the, freedom of organised labour. The English unions are suffering nothing mure than an inability, to coerce minorities into supporting men and opinions 'and activities disagreeable to them, nothing more than an inability to range as far beyond the boundaries of their charters as they ' would like. They still retain unimpaired the power to order strikes. "What they would do were this'- power denied to them it is almost impossible to imagine. The New York decision is not really very startling, and if it is upheld on appeal to the Federal* Court, it will serve as a particularly interesting example of the enormous resources of the Constitution. In a message to Congress on April 20. 1908, Mr. ■ Roosevelt, while declaring that a labour boycott was a restraint of trade, added that "the heartiest encouragement should be given to the wage workers to form labour unions and to enter into agreements with their employers; and their right to strike, so long as they act peaceably, must be pre-. served.', . This, no doubt, is sound law' and good sense, but there is a great difference between the individual's right to strike and the right of a union to order its members to cease work. The, cable message is very brief, but we expect it will be found that Judge Goff's decision does not confound the two things. To leave untouched thn right of any workei to ceaso work at any time (unless, of course, he has bound himself by. any contract on the point), and.at the same time to tako away the right of a union to. order a strike, is to do no more than secure the .individual worker against coercion. In every striko there is a minority—often,.under the "open ballot" system, a majority— of unionists against striking, and if it is wrong that a majority should have power to coerce a minority into supporting any political, action which they disapprove of, it is certainly no less tyrannous and-wrong that men should be forced to strike against their will. The thing attacked'in the Goff judgment 'is, if we road the cable message aright, in essence the same thing as was attacked by the decision in the Osborne case. Should the Goff judgment stand, and should . Its intention bo faithfully assisted by tho Administration,. it may well happen that the' aspect of American industry will eventually undergo a great change. Loft to their own . judgment as a group of individuals, and set free from the obligation to obey the Labour "bosses," the workers will be disinclined to strike at all. When they do strike, it will be as individuals, and under great provocation. •

The real value of the decision which has startled the labour organisations in America is that it will assist to focus attention upon the whole question of the status of the trades union., That question has never been properly considered in any country, and least of all in New Zealand, where one might have expected that , ir. would receive more careful consideration. than in any other country, since nowhere else, as yet, has "organised labour" been endowed with so many and such great special privileges. The unions represent! as wo showed the other day, only a fraction of the manual workers of the community, and the bestowal of r special privileges and rights upon them—rights-over-riding the common liberties of all other persons, in some cases—is therefore something much worse than that bad enough thing, the special endowment of a single class of the population. Wo are very firm believers in the right of any individual to strike in every case where he has nbt contracted not to strike, and this for exactly the same reason that we oppose the contention that a union may order its members to strike or secure preference to unionr ists or spend its funds just as it pleases. Even were unions prevented from ordering strikes, strikes might .take place now and then, but they would dc of , far less frequency and they would be far more effective from the point of view of the workers. The community and the workers would alike benefit from the liberation of industry from the tyranny of the "bosses" of a minority of fclie worker*.