CAN A COOK BOIL WATER?

Hokitika Guardian, 24 September 1920, Page 4

CAN A COOK BOIL WATER?

HOW TRADE UNIONS RUN THE COUNTRY.

(Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare League).

A certain vessel of the Union Steamship Company’s fleet is not allowed to run because two bodies of workmen are jjt loggerheads. As wo understand the dispute it amounts to this, that the firemen say that the cook cannot boil water and tho cooks and stewards say he can. The Company which employs has no say in the matter, and the public, the long suffering public, is not in the least considered. Were we a lot of children playing at running industries this episode would bo amusing. Wo might even work it up into a Trades’ Union Comic Opera under such a title as “The Fools’ Paradise,” or ‘‘Labours’ lingering lunacy.” It is not a matter of sport, however, to have a country’s industries impeded and hampered to pay for that sort of thing, and the great trouble is that the general public, workers in the mass, have to bear the burdens, but are allowed no direct say in these affairs. Just east our minds back a few months. We have had tramway strikes, jockey strike, watersiders’ strike and coal, well, regarding coal strikes like the poor, they arc ever with us. The reasons why a dispute is scarcely settled at one mine before,some petty strike is reported at another arc hard to explain. Viewing the whole situation it looks as if the Labour Unions and Federations imbued with revolutionary and syndicalist ideas were intent on causing as much industrial trouble as possible. We have generally found that people who go out looking for trouble usually get it, and unless there is a. return to something like sanity one of these days, the public of Now Zealand will lose its temper and deal with industrial . disturbers of the peace in a most drastic manner. ,

At present every tribunal is made the excuse for stopping work. The sugar workers at Auckland struck work and declared they would not go back until all wore reinstated. They said some were being victimised. Now they have decided to return to work in a body. What becomes of their plea of victimisation Was it only got up for the occasion? In such instances the rule we find is “strike first then discover tho facts.” The minors at Huntly, Rotowaru and Piikemiro may have a good case for reduced rates on the Railway ill travelling to their work, but it is absurd to argue that the Mining Companies should pay the railway fares. It would he equally reasonable for all workers to demand that their employers should pay the train, tram or other locomotion charges of conveying them from their homes to their work. There is no case for the miners striking because the Railway Department won’t give give them what they want. Altogether flic public is getting sick and tired of the anarchist spirit that seems to have taken hold of the Labour movement. Everything lias been done in New Zealand to ensure that the workers shall have a fair hearing in respect to any legitimate claims, Conciliation Conn oils’ Arbitration, Court, Special Conferences, Special boards. If in the face of all these efforts to give the workers a just hearing and fair deal there is going to be only the response that Labour in sections will constantly stop work and impede the Industries of the country then the public will lie justified in demanding that some other course be taken.

Combinations in restraint of trade are a public menace whether they he of wage earners or cnptalists, and the time seems to have arrived when the Legislature of this country should determine whether any such combinations should have a legal standing within the Dominion. We know that numbers say:—“We will use both political action and direct action.” It is nearly time that, in the public interest, the Legislature told these people plainly that if they take the law ino their own hands they shall have no standing of protection under the law of the land. That is the right way to deal with those social malcontents who respect nobody’s rights hut their own.