The Dominion. THURSDAY, MAY 16, 1912. THE WAIHI STRIKE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1441, 16 May 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, MAY 16, 1912. THE WAIHI STRIKE.

In this land of strikes and threats' to strike there has never been a strike quite so strange and tyrannical as that which has just taken place in Waihi. Employers are well accustomed by now to the injustice _ of having to submit to a law which, professing to bind their employees equally with themselves, can be treated with contempt by the labour unions aii all times. It is something new to them, however, to see their works brought to a standstill, and the community subjected to great loss and inconvenience, as the result of an internal quarrel of the employees, The facts have the same perfect simplicity as that principle of the Federation of Labour, that an agreement is binding upon Federation members only so long as there seems to bo nothing to be gained by breaking it. The Waihi Miners Union, comprising the majority of the army of men employed at the Waihi mine, cancelled its registration a year ago. A section of the workers, however—the engine-drivers —was unwilling to join the Federation, and established a union of their own according to the provisions of the Arbitration Act. Conncient of its power, and faithfully contemptuous of the fact that its members were working under an agreement, the big unregistered union called out its members and notified the company that a strike would be maintained until the company insisted on the disbandment of the new and quite legitimate union and the submission of its members to the Federation of Labour.

Since it is possible that the ordinary law courts may later on have to deal with suits arising out of the affair, we need say no more of the legal aspect of the strike than that a case seems to lie against the Waihi Miners' Union for damage clone to the new unionists by forcing them into unemployment. The legal aspect, however, is for the moment of less public interest and importance than the place of the strike in the development of unionist aggression and industrial disorder under thr; now hopelessly discredited Arbitration Act. Looked at from between the covers of the Act the situation is wildly grotesque, and the Act cannot touch it. For we have a strike, which the Act was designed to prevent by encouraging unionism, precipitated by the refusal of a body of workers outside the Act to permit another body of workers to form a union under the Act! The broad fact which the public will understand, even more easily than the important fact that a stationary en-gine-driver has nothing necessarily in common with miners, is that the new spirit of trade union tyranny has been at work again. The agents of the strike have gone one better than seeking to force men into a union; the; , arc seeking to force unionists to abandon their own union and join another, or, to put it another way, to force fellow unionists out of the zone of the Arbitration Act. That their method of exercising this tyranny involves the infliction of damage upon the whole community is only an incidental aggravation'—serious as it is in effect—of the offence of tyranny. The unionist spirit has indeed developed to a sublime degree when it can detect and pursue "scabbery" in a duly organised unioiii

In the meantime, what is the position of the company and the community,! Should the company fail to persuade the new union to become extinct, and feel itself driven into the alternative of replacing the winders by men who will join the big unregistered union, it will clearly'commit the offence of dismissine men simply because, tliey arc members of a union'. In this particular ngain the Arbitration Act. is shown up as p. fnnlish and ehovUighted tqpaaurn as well as an impotent but iint&ting

one. It would seem, from a statement by an Auckland labour leader, that the. Federation of Labour believes that it can make the trouble the basis of a general transport strike, and, by winning, take its revenge upon the Auckland people for decisively condemning labour aggression by electing Mr. Parr as Mayor of the city. The community is perfectly willing and ready to show 1 the foolish advocates of the general strike that New Zealand is exactly like all other countries in whicn the general strike has been attempted, in that it will see the, thing right through. We do not know what view the trade unions outside the Federation -will take. Perhaps they may consider it good tactics to profess regret and indignation at the bulldozing methods of the Federation. But there is neither regret nor indignation in the statement of "Professor" W. T. Mills, the organiser of the Labour party. He cautiously talks round the subject, avoiding the real issue and contenting himself wuu vague and obvious generalities. The occasion is one which should find the United Labour party throwing all its weight against the Waihi Miners' Union, and countering the Federation by using the regular unions to support the company, the community, and the menaced engine-drivers. But will if? Is it afraid to tackle its rival, the Labour Federation 1