THE TRAMWAY TROUBLE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1349, 29 January 1912, Page 4

THE TRAMWAY TROUBLE.

The vote of the tramwaymen in favour of striking as a protest against tho City Council's refusal to dismiss an inspector, who so far as the evidence showed had done nothing more than his duty, was recorded before tho final decision of the Council in the matter was given. Whether the same result would be obtained if tho ballot were taken again to-day may be open to question. Possibly the verdict would be the same, but the majority in favour of striking would probably be loss. Many of the men have no doubt realised ere this that the only principle involved in the fight—if light there be—is the question of whether the City Council or the Tramways Union is to control the appointment of ths city's employees and the management of the city's affairs. The union insists that an inspector, appointed to supervise the work of a section of the union's members, shall be dismissed because the men dislike him; and the Council very properly has refused to , dismiss an employee who has served it faithfully and well and against whom the Tramways Union has failed to prove anything to warrant his removal. If; the Council were so unwise and so false to its trust as tho guardian of the citizens' interests as to submit to the dictation of the Tramways Union in such a matter it would establish a principle which would bring about a stab of chaos in the business management of the city's affairs. If InsrccToit Fuller were dismissed simply because the union objects-to his employment the effect inevitably would be that every inspector employed by the Council would feel that his real masters were the union officials and not the City Council. And ■ what sort of check on the union members in their daily work would inspectors in such circumstances be? But more than that: next week, or at some future time, we should have the union demanding the dismissal of the manager or his assistant or anyone else in a position of authority who dared to offend any section of the employees in the performance of his duty to the city.

, The position taken up by the union in this matter is really so preposterous that it is difficult to believe that it has seriously considered what it actually means. It has been encouraged no doubt by the weakness of certain City Councillors and the Mayor to think that because of the numbers it can arrav against the single inspector, the Council was bound_ to give way and commit any injustice rather than face the possibility of a strike. Acting on this belief it attempted to intimidate the Council by taking a strike ballot, during the time that the matter was under consideration by the Council. It overlooked the fact that the issue involved was not merely the dismissal of an unfortunate official who had been singled out for the enmity of the union, but a very large and important question of principle, and so it finds itself today iri the position of threatening to inconvenience the whole city without having given tho slightest evidence that it has even a shadow of justification for this extreme and wanton act of tyranny.

If the public and the more reasonable of the tramway employees have any doubt at all as to tho merits of the matter those doubts should bs removed by a perusal of the bombastic rubbish Honoured with the title of a, manifesto, issued by the Federation of Labour with the idea apparently of stimulating the tramwaymen and terrorising the public. The manifesto, which will be found in full in another column, is the sort of blatant clap-trap that can only provoke the ridicule of those who trouble to look into facts, and the disgust of those who look to Labour to some day play a really important part in the management of the country's affairs. What tramway employee; what labour unionist, can fail ■ to perceive the utter insincerity; the absurd mock heroics; the ludicrous misrepresentation of facts, which go to make up this grotesque incitement to the Tramways Union to fight what it styles the "ofttimos brutal body called the public" , / The Federation of Labour wants the Wellington Tramways Union to join its ranks and this is the method of the Federation officials to win it over— by inciting it to embark on a fight in which it must in the end bo a loser and which, though it may be able, to inconvenience the public for a time, must bring hardship and distress lo the wives and families of many of its own members. The public has something to thank the Federation of Labour for. 'Citizens can now see the extravagant lengths to which its leaders aro prepared to go and what they have to expect whore those leaders are concerned. The Federation's manifesto should prove the last straw with a longsuffering public. It is quite time that some stand was taken against these overbearing and dictatorial methods. If thi Tramways Union wishes to fight the city in so bad a cause, let it have all the fi>bt ii v/anls. ißettor to close down the tramways altogether than to hand over the management of this great municipal undertaking to the Tromvnys Union of Employes. >