COMPULSORY UNIONISM.

Evening Star, Issue 24294, 8 September 1942, Page 5

COMPULSORY UNIONISM.

TO TTtB 13D1TOU. Sir, —“A Victim” ignores the fact that voluntary unionism gives the employer the evil power to intimidate and victimise unionists in order to establish compulsory non-unionism. In the interests of the fair employers who conform to arbitration awards compulsory unionism alone makes it possible for the unions to service the awards, thereby compelling the sweating type of employer to pay up and compete on a jusler basis. Those who attend the monthly meetings of the General Labourers’ Union get, in the secretary’s monthly reports, evidence that much arrears of back pay owing to workers has been periodically collected, both in the interest of the worker and the fair employer, who otherwise would be undermined by this unfair competition. If and when strikes have occurred, as your correspondent exaggoratingiy claims, they have been due to sweaters depriving workers of what they are entitled to receive. This was specially true in the case of stevedore contractors on wharves, but to bring peace in that industry and co-ordination in the war work the watersiders, by doing the work co-op-eratively, have replaced the stevedore contractor, and since then nowhere under the co-operative contract system has a strike occurred. This proves that the remedy for strikes, where a sweating employer foments them, is that he should, in the interests of the war effort, be replaced by the workers co-operatively contracting, but where the private contractor adheres to the provisions of the awards the unions have no quarrel with him at all. To show on what utterly baseless grounds your correspondent makes his criticisms I enclose a copy of the balance sheet of the Labourers’ Union, signed by a certificated auditor, which I received last March; 1 also enclose a printed notice of September Bth’s monthly meeting calling for nominations for the annual meeting at the union rooms of October 11, which notice is posted to each member of the union. The copy of the balance sheet was typed instead of being printed, due to war-time economy. Members at each monthly meeting, when passing accounts, get an itemised statement of monthly expenditure, which must be passed or endorsed at such meetings. Secretaries are not union bosses; they merely carry out the instructions agreed to at the monthly meetings of members and service the awards in the interests of their union members. The demand for union representation in the Patriotic Society is necessary, as each union has special knowledge of the occupation a returned soldier applicant may work at, and the application would bo dealt with in an understanding and sympathetic way, which would prevent the soldier being used, as in the last war, as a lever to break down award conditions which he is entitled to the full to receive. Your correspondent ignores the fact that the workers in trades unions subscribed to the funds raised by Mr A. C. Cameron and his sub-zone committee, and it was only because of the stalemate complained of by Mr Cameron that Labour proved that if allowed administrative control, it could raise the funds allotted to it, which it did. It could also wisely administer the expenditure.—l am, etc., J. E. MacManus (Member of Press Committee, General Labourers’ Union). September 8.