UNOFFICIAL STRIKES.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 188, 26 August 1937, Page 4

UNOFFICIAL STRIKES.

On another page will be found a cable message which sets out the attitude of the general councii of the British Trades Union Congress towards sporadic strikes such as those which have been in such increased evidence in this country since the present Government took office. From this it will be seen how essential the governing body of British unionists regards it that a tight hand should be kept on all such movements. .This provides a marked contrast with our experience here in New Zealand, as illustrated, for instance, by the carpenters' strike that is holding up the erection of workers' dwellings at Auckland. In that case, according to local Press reports, the secretary of the union to which the men belong contents himself with disclaiming for himseif and his executive all resjonsibility for the strike. He seems to think that it is quite sufficient for him to say that "it is a job action, not a union strike. As a union we took no active steps in the dispute, the men on the job arranging fheir own mee'ting and selecting their own chairman." But, having said this by way of absolving the union from responsibility, he goes on to say that "although there is no union dispute, we shall give the men concerned in the present trouble as much help as possible,' which can scarcely be read as anything but an approval and virtual adoption of this unauthorised and, we fancy, illegal strike by the union, or, at any ratc, by the secretary in the union' s name. In discussing the situation that has thus been created there is no call to attempt any judgment on the merits of the dispute, in which it is quite possible that the men have some fairly just grievance of which to complain. The question really at issue is as to whether a Labour Government, so ready to take and exercise exceptional powers in other directions, has either the wit or the wish to find means for checking these so frequent displays^ of local and sectional trade unionist power. Eacb of these exhibitions may not,. in the eyes of an apathetic public, assume very serious proportions. Some of them may have occasioned sufficient public inconvenience and individual loss to stir passing interest, but that. has soon died down. What is not at all'generally realised as it should be is the cumulative effect which these strikes have in the way of deterring the country' s economic res ■ covery, the expansion of its industries and the absorption'of its workless thousands into productive and renumerative employment. Our new Government has in other respects done a good deal to retard the progress that might otherwise have been reasonably expected, indeed has heretofore been invariably experienced, on the advent of better times after a period of depression. It has imposed all manner of restraints and restrictions upon the p'rlvate enterprise that has hitherto, under like conditions, always shown itself as ready to pluy its part — and it has provided absolutely nothing, so fcr as productive undertakings are concerned, to take its pl-ice. There can be scant wonder then that we still have soms scores of thousands of names on the unemployment register, and that the only really substantial reduction in the number has arisen from the taking of some good few thousands onto public works — some of the more costly being of very doubtful utility — at the risk of the general body of taxpayers. On top of all this come these so often recurring strikes, which most undoubtedly have their effect in frightening capi- ■ tal off the industrial market, for no one launching a new wage-paying industry can but fear its being held up at any time by the irresponsible action of a few undisciplined employees. Such apprehensions are, of course, only emphasised by the spectacle of a contract in which the Government itself is vitally concerned being suddenly stopped without, as yet at any rate, any movement on the part of the Government to mark its disapproval. If a Labour Government, ■ with an overwhelming majority at its back, cannot or will not devise means for ending these so disturbing exhibitions of power, where are we going to look-for relief ? Most folk are beginning to feel that it is merely lip-service that the Government pays to the prmciple of "industrial conciliation and arbitration". and that, in the hearts of the Ministers, their sympathy is with the strike as the most effective weapon wherevfith to reduce the employer to "reason." At least one of them, ili an unguarded moment of irritation, has said as much.