The Grey River Argus TUESDAY, September 7, 1948. INFLUENCE OF TRADES UNIONISM

Grey River Argus, 7 September 1948, Page 4

The Grey River Argus TUESDAY, September 7, 1948. INFLUENCE OF TRADES UNIONISM

gINCE the year which Europe knows as that of revolutions, when the prediction was made that the working class would be forced by exploitation and loss of status everywhere to rebel, about a century has elapsed. The intervening decades have seen Organised Labour falsify the prediction. Power has increasingly come to be shared in most countries by the working class, with a steady betterment of their conditions, and a great modification in the extent of their exploitation. The fact is alone a solid reason for the conclusion that the real Marxian thesis will never gain in the Western world any ascendancy such as that which it attained 30 years ago in Eastern Europe, but which the latest differences in the Communist camp at least may shortly modify very greatly. Addressing the Trades Union Congress this week in Britain the Archbishop of Canterbury noted the fact that never before have the trade unions in Britain had such economic and political power as they have now. The same may be said of several Dominions, as well as various other States. The policy of stabilisation in industry, au expedient on which so many Governments now depend, is based largely on the co-operation of Organised Labour. Without this it could not continue in Britain. In Australia, as in New Zealand, it is likewise to trades unions that Governments as well as parties address themselves to buttress the national economy. Some politicians occasionally plead that a more effective expedient might be a resort to legal compulsion. They speak of the enforcement of statutes or regulations to increase output or punish stoppages. It is doubtless an authentic reflex of the capitalistic philosophy of last century, and possibly of the minds of many capitalists to-day. The great majority of people, however, have long ceased to think in such terms. Trades unionism has in fact worked a revolution of a type radically different from that predicted a century since. Upon its leaders and organisations there instead has been placed a great responsibility. They have to take into account the whole community no less than the workers. The example is notably influencing people who, while they work for a salary, used formerly to be classed otherwise than with the workers. Illustrations in New Zealand have been those of the whole rank and file of the public servants. A recent case is the' proposal, likely to take effect next year, for one organisation for the whole of the State school teachers. Certainly professional organisations are not new. Yet they have hitherto been far more characterised by separateness than by any inclination to follow the example of trade unions. It is necessary to go back over three centuries to find organisation of a type more general than that of wage earners, namely, the guilds which predatory capitalism, at its origins, undermined. Yesterday there lined up on the same front as other workers the employees of the banks in New Zealand with a case for an improvement in pay and conditions which it is sought to consolidate in terms of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. It may be said that many bank employees are not yet behind this movement. It also may be said, however, that more vill in due course line up with it. If the manual toilers in the course of generations have succeeded in securing legislation and tribunals ensuring a degree of distributive justice, they may not have had any great encouragement from the workers in other walks of life. The latter nevertheless are coming to see the use of this principle, and the wisdom of means to give it effect in. even their own case.