The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1912. TRADE UNIONS AND THE LAW.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1572, 16 October 1912, Page 6

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1912. TRADE UNIONS AND THE LAW.

We rather fancy that the'y are unduly excited who describe in very extreme terms the importance and significance of the Taupiri mineowners' action l in dismissing those miners who compose the executive of the Waikato Miners' Union. That it is interesting, and may in the long run be of real importance, is of course clear enough. In reply to" a question in the House of Representatives yesterday the PitiME Minister wisely said nothing more than that the position is being referred to the Crown law officers. The action of the directors of the company is the_ outcome of the behaviour of their employees in refusing to work on Thursday last. In his statement to the union, Mr. E. W. Alison, on behalf of the directors, noted that good relations had existed between the company and its men, and went ? n to say that, while they did iiot intend to take any action to the prejudice of the miners as a whole, the directors felt that something must be done, and had accordingly decided to dismiss the union's officials. ( The directors," the statement runs, feel that, as is implied if not expressed in the award, they have the right to demand and depend upon tho best efforts of the executive of the union to Bee that the terms of the award are faithfully and loyally observed, and, in this,'the directors are of opinion that the executive have signally failed." In a statement for the Press, Mn. Alison amplifies this view. Nobody can reasonably dispute that, in the circumstances, the cessation of work on Thursday, was "a challenge to the directors" which "raised the question as to whether the employer is to be left even the right to carry on his business. The essence of the directors' justification of their action is in this passage:

In dispensing with the services of tho members of the executive, the directors are not seeking to strike a blow at union]ism-' £ '? r fully the right and desirability of tho men working in a largo industry being banded together officially in union, and taking united action for the benefit of members, but they do claim that tno actions of the men placed at tho head of such a union shall be thoso of lairabiding and agreement-keeping citiwns and hot those of m<ja who evidently fail to realise their honourable duties and their serious responsibility.

Perhaps the matter will ultimately comc before tho Courts, and the Gourts must be loft to settle it. But morally, the case for the directors' as set out in the -words just quoted is very strong. It obtains extra strength from the fact that the relations between the company and the men have hitherto been amicable and from the' further fact that the agreement'which has been registered (and which has eleven months still to run) contains a concession by the directors of preference to unionists in the fullest degree (new workers must join the union or be dismissed). As to the law on the subject it appears to be contained in Section 00 'of the 190S Amending Act, which replaces the short Scction 10!) of the principal Act. Employers arc prohibited from dismissing a worker "by reason merely of the fact that the worker is an officer or a member of the union," and a sub-clause dealing with the dismissal of members of the union executive, requires the employer to show that the dismissal was due to "a reason other than that acted,in any of tho said capacities," It is oonoeivablo

that a Court, taking the general drift of the legislation into account will distinguish between (1) the dismissal of a union officer merely because he was, and acted as, an officer, and (2) the dismissal of a union oflicor because, as an officer, he acted, or failed to act, in a certain way. These are issues for the Courts. The issue for the public is different, and it is very obvious. Everyone who has followed the course of the arbitration law with any care knows that at the back of many of the difficulties of the legislators has been tile fact that it is hard to isolate as an easily handled clement for legislative treatment the responsibility of union executives. Case after case has arisen when injustice has been done, through perfectly correct legal decisions, owing to the fact that strikes have taken placc and damage created without formal instructions b,y union executives. The Arbitration Court has sometimes even sought to lay it down that the mere fact of a strike presumes exeeutivo responsibility, The law obviously needs .to be brought into correspondence with justice and with facts. Very few people anywhere nowadays object to the formation of trade unions, and in the abstract it is a good thing to prohibit the penalising of unionists qua unionists by employers, or of union officials qua union officials. But what is to bo done if, within the dominion of an Act prohibiting certain actions, a union's executive will not, or can not, restrain its members from committing those actions? To invest with a statutory sanctity the executive of a union, to provide either expressly or implicitly that the members must obey the executive, and to permit the possibility that members may at any time break the lawj is to maintain a position as repugnant to justice as to common-sense. The law cannot, of course, effect that the members of a union will act precisely as the executive commands, but it can, and it obviously should, ask of the unions, in return for the great and special privileges it has conferred upon them, that they shall be orderly corporations. This is really one of the most important problems of latter-day unionism. It is quite the most serious problem in English trade unionism. If the members of a union are forced by the law into obedience to the executive, and the is held responsible for those actions of members which are not defiant of executive commands, the result would be good for everyone, and not by any means least for the unionists, who would soon discover the usefulness of choosing for the executive posts their wisest and fairest-minded fellow workers.