A CORRESPONDENT COMPLAINS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 10, 27 January 1937, Page 4

A CORRESPONDENT COMPLAINS.

A correspondent, wkose letter apears in anotber column to-day, takes us to task for what he terms "hysterical" comment on the recent "dispnte" between Auckland freezing companies and their employees and on the steps taken by the Minister of Labour to ' ' settle ' ' it. In reply we would say — 1. Our correspondent entirely ignores the fact that in each of the articles of which he makes complaint it is acknowledged that the men may have had just.grievance that called for remely. Our only crlticism whether "hysterical" or not, was of the nianner in which they aougiit ' redress and in which the Minister brought it about. 2. The fact, if such it may bo, that the wage question affected men handling dairy produce scarcely warranted "direct aetion '' that, if persisted in, was calculated to cause serious loss to the hard-working dairymen as well as to the meat-growers. 3. As to our reference to the wage-rate urged by the union advocate before the Arbitration Court ,our information came from a source that we have hitherto found entirely reliable. 4. As to the inconsisteney of two findings of the Court, that is covered by par. l above. 5. As to what has been really thc main theme of our articles, the resOrt to the "stay-in strike" — Mr. Armstrong himself called it that— our correspondent is discreetly silent. Does he approve of it, and does he say that it was not of a distinctly Parisian Communistic character?