UNION DICTATORSHIP

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 199, 20 May 1944, Page 6

UNION DICTATORSHIP

The disclosure in Review, the official journal of the New Zealand Returned Services Association, that a soldier who accepted temporary essential employment while on furlough from the Middle, East has been dunned by a trades union secretary for union “dues” will not surprise anybody who is familiar with the practices of certain unions nowadays in this country. People directed compulsorily to essential work, even students- earning much-needed pocket money during vacation periods, have been mulcted in this way after being forced, unwillingly, into union membership for the time being. J his procedure .has become a matter of course. The way to it was opened when the Government introduced compulsory unionism,‘bnd full advantage been taken of that legislation to impose union dictation upon workers, whether they be permanent or temporary, and regardless of their views concerning union membership. The thing that will astonish many people who may not, up to the present, have realized the full significance of union dictatorship, and the lengths to which it can.go, is the manner in which a trades union secretary negotiated with Trooper Randall Sim, a volunteer soldier with a long record of overseas service, who is now back with the New Zealand Division in Italy. According to Review, Mil Sim, while on furlough, accepted employment in a short-handed I aranaki dairy factory and in consequence was pounced upon for union fees. When he refused to pay them, on the grounds that he was simply using some of his furlough to lend a hand on essential work in the factoiy foi a brief period, he was told by letter from a union secretary that he should “pull his weight.” To this piece of impertinence was added the remark:

Because yon are one of many thousands who have boon in the army, are you going to trade on that for the rest of your life to shirk vour share of the cost of maintaining decent conditions?

This, coming from a civilian union secretary and addressed to a serving soldier of long service in the war zone, unhappily goes deeper than mere insult. It discloses an attitude —a way of thinking which appears to be becomingall too common. It is the dictator speaking -the local, petty dictator, hut one so certain of his power as to feel able to disregard logic, moral justice and the ordinary fitness of things, and to demand, the levy his union executives consider they are entitled to receive. It is clear from the action of the union secretary and the stand taken by the union bosses who supported him. that this homily, as coming from a civilian union official to a New Zealand trooper, was regarded as being fitting and necessary. It did not strike them as being arrogantly impertinent and preposterous, but was merely an attempted means to an end—the disciplining of a rank-and-l(!e w inker and the extraction from him of a cash levy to swell the funds available for the upkeep of one or more of the expanding group of well-paid Union officials. No doubt public resentment concerning this shameful episode will be widespread, but a deeper reason for disquiet lies in the fact that the action taken by the union secretary points towaid a future dictatorship over the worker which will be harsh and tuthless, regardless of circumstance. on are one of many thousands, the union secretary pointed out to 1 rooper Sim. .Are you going tutiade on your army service?” Here is-shown an attitude towaid nten who, sooner or later, will be seeking civilian re-establishment in this Dominion, which is a negation of justice and public sentiment, and one which could not be too strongly opposed and condemned.