THE STRIKE FIRST AND ALL THE TIME

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 183, 20 August 1937, Page 4

THE STRIKE FIRST AND ALL THE TIME

In the course of his pre-sessional address at Havelock North, the Member for Waipawa touched lightly, but only very lightly upon a subject which really calls for the most serions attent'ion. He is reported as saying 1 "We do not want strikes, The .people whp strike, with the present Governmenf in phiee# are doing great harm to their fellow workmen," As with other speakers for the party, his roain, if not only, coneern would seem to be as to how far these strikes and the like, Which have been so much more in evidence since^his party came into power, may reflect adversely on its prospects at the next election, There is, however, a very great deal mere to the question than that, and it is one that can be and ought to be approached quite apart from all party considerations. It is not party but public interests that should be taken into first account, for it is the long-suffering and voiceless public who have to suffer the, inqonvenience and, in the end, have to pay for the very heavy aggregate losses that are entailed. Yet for thero there would seem to be no thought whatever on the part of our legislators. What these losses may tptal up to in the course of a year it is, of course, impos- • sible to guess even approximately. But in wages alone it must mount up to scores of thousands of pounds for in this respect not only those directly concerned in these hold-ups are affected, but also in most cases hundreds of others whose earnings depend upon continuity of work in the industries or services that are interrupted. And it is to be noted that this takes place most frequently in key industries and services Upon which Others are very iargely dependent. Thus, in the first place the workers themselves are to a very substantial extent deprived of that "spending power" which is the basis of the Labpuf Party's ecQnomic poiicy, As for the employers, their losses, too, are quite inestim- . able, but, as matters are, they bave simply to grin and bear them, taking wbat chance may be afforded of passing them on to the .public, and reducing nianual empioyment to a minimum, We eannot pretend to any full knowledge of the existing laws a§ they relate to the "right to strike," but whatever they may be, it is very obvious that either they are ineffective or are not brought into operation, for rarely, if ever do we hear " of any specific action being taken under them, while any breaches of industrial laws by employers, however trivial and insignificant, are met with'lhe speediest retribution possible. This may be said to have been very Iargely the case under previous Governments, but under the present it is being brought into much stropger relief by the multiplieity of strikes, many of them launched on the fUmsiest of pretexts. Thus more than ever previously is our Government called upon to deal with this canker which eats so persistently and deeply into our industrial life and which cannot but spread still further through it unless some effectual check is applied. The present Government is, or should be, in a position much better than any before to deal with it, It is a workers* Government, purely and simply, and claims to have done or to be doing all that is needed for making them happy and contented. Yet these arbitrary movements, very seriously and adversely affecting the wage-earners themselves, as well as the rest of the community, are allowed to pass practically unnoticed or at most result in ministerial intervention along lines that can have little effect but to lend them encouragement. This has been the case even when they took the form of the "stay-in'v strike, introduced to this country by the Auckland freezing-works hands and recenliy provided with a still more glaring exampie by the Mejbourne gas-works employees, thus showing what an infectious evil it is. It may possibly be, of course, that the law as it stands does not rnake provision for applying an effective remedy, but, should this be the case, then a Government which has had no hesitation in imposing restrictions without end upon employers, should at once amend it with a view to making the strike the last, not the first, recourse for sequring redress of grievances, whether well or ill founded. Only to-day wo hear the Acting-Minister of Labour, on the settlement of the latest Wellington waterfront trouble, appealing to both employers and employees for cordial co-operation. How can this be honestly expected when either "the law or its administration is so lop-sided? The impression is steadily growing that our Government is either very much in sympathy with or else very much afraid of what are termed the "militant" trade unions. It could do nothing better calculated to prevent this impression crystaliising into absolute conviction than by taking effective steps to check the all too ready resort to the strike and its many subsidiary manifestations.