INDUSTRIAL TROUBLES MULTIPLIED.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 64, 8 December 1937, Page 4

INDUSTRIAL TROUBLES MULTIPLIED.

How industrial troubles have multi^lied under a Labour Government that undertook to put an end to them is well instanced by last week's news, which gave us word of no less than four hold-ups in progress at the one time. Of the Auckland waterside strike we wrote something yesterday. Then, simultaneously at "Wellington the watersiders refused, if only for a shorfc time, to carry on the loading of a vessel except in .their own leisurely way, reducing by 25 per cent. the number of bags of cargo to be included in each lift. Next, we had the girls at the Onehunga Woollen Mills leaving their work because the management had, probably for some good reason, seen fit to make some re-allotment of looms among them. This strike is still in progress, with all hands at the mills now impljcated in it. Finally, we had tools downed at the Linton coal mines in the South Island. There the oft-alleged accusation of "victimisation" has been advanced against the management, a cause of difference which the Minister himself has pointed out should have been referred to a disputes committee, bnt apparently was not, with the result that operations have been suspended for some days. This is happening week in and week out under the administration of men who promised us that, if only the reins of governmen were placed in their hands, industrial peace would reign throughout the land. Since those reins were secured the number of strikcs and other industrial disturbances has gone rapidly up, and the records for the first three-quarters of the current calendar year show that they averaged out at something more than one a week. Workers directly involved forfeitcd over £20,000 in wages. What may have been the losses of others whose work was suspended or interrupted by these strikes cannot even be guessed at, but it was probably a good deal more. Nor is it possible to estimate what they cost the business community and through it the consmuing community _that .has alw.ayA tu £&% ia end.