Thoughts For The Times

Hokitika Guardian, 12 June 1920, Page 2

Thoughts For The Times

Vagahies of Labour. Sporadic stoppages of ivork for ttie purpose of demonstrating the mood of organised Labour have become habitual in New'! Zealand. So much so, indeed that the public seem inclined to accept them as part of the Dominon’s demon)i. ised industrial system. The vagaries of Labour are now classed with the varia-

tions in the weather; we appear to have reached that stage to which it is at least something to he able to say in wan optimism that if it is bad to-day it may be good to-morrow. And the vicious practice of stopping work as a mere demonstration of protest or as an exercise of artificial sympathy threatens to become popular among industrial unions. Tt spreads rapidly, and encounters but few obstacles. That is not altogether surprising; authority is either hopelessly impotent or is playing for its own fiands. As for the average employer, who in the bad old days was painted as a surly bogey man with a giant’s boot, lie appears to linvp been robbed of his glory ,if not yet pf his capital, and is now meek and mute, and secretly grate, fill to know that some work is still pos. sible. Tlie whole business would be a great’joke if it were not serious—if, in short, it were not sapping the moral fibre of all the nations—for the nonsense that is growing rapidly in New Zealand has already yielded hitter harvest in other count trios.