The Gaurdian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1927. A CRITICAL ISSUE.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 September 1927, Page 2

The Gaurdian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1927. A CRITICAL ISSUE.

A very serious and certainly critical situation has arisen in Australia, lallowing the claims and demand- of organised labor in that locality. The is.no is a coin-bill-!!turn of niiliiaiit and indcstrial warfare due to the very oppressive attitude of the Union leaders who with their organisations are prepared to go to the length of defying even a Labor Government—as in the case of Queensland. In spite of Arbitration Courts and Wages Boards, Australia seems likely to become known throughout the world in the near future as the great centre of industrial warfare. Just now in Queensland there is in progress a struggle between the railway unions and the State Government which seems likely to culminate in a strike that may quite possibly affect the whole Commonwealth. At the same time the Federated Seamen’s Union has put forward a series of demands on behalf of the men that the employers cannot possibly accept, and that may easily precipitate a most serious industrial upheaval. As regards the claims made by the seamen, we presume, says the Auckland Star, that the statement published by the Steamship Owners’ Association through its secretary, may be accepted as accurate and authentic. According to tin's official version of the case tho wages now received bv Australian sonmen are four times the pay of German seamen, nearly double the wages of British and Norwegian seamen, and 50 per cent, higher than the American scale of pay. The new scale would give Australian seamen four times the British and twice the New Zealand rate of pay; and it- would raise the wages of a fireman working eight hours out of the twenty-four, from £271 a year to £546 a year, including nil allowances. The forty-four hours’ week, if conceded, would mean an additional

openditure of £200.000 a year in the shape of overtime pay, and the total increased cost of the new lose to the shipowners is set down at about £l.OOD.GOO a- year. Comment upon such claims is almost superfluous. Tt is evident that those responsible for these demands have not concerned themselves in the least with the financial position and prospects of the shipping industry, hut are looking at the whole question solely from the men’s point of view. Indeed, so unreasonable are the conditions set forth in the new log that we may justifiably infer a deliber-

ate intention on the part of the unions to start a quarrel which must result in a strike. A spirit of inveterate hostility to the whole existing economic order of things is certainly behind the seamen's trouble in New South Wales and Victoria, and the railway conflictin Queensland. It is interesting to note that the Premier of Queensland, himself a well-tried Labour lender, has been denounced by the A.R.U. as a “political thug” for daring to declare that the State, and not the workers, must control the public services. The Queensland strikers should surely understand that no Government can afford to resign its powers into the hands of one section of the community. Mr Duncan Graham, a Socialist ALP., told the British miners a few weeks ago that every Government must put down revolution, and a Labour Government would do it if it had the power. The quarrel over seamen’s wages may imperil Australia’s mercantile future,

but in the Queensland railway struggle the very existence of organised government is at stake. And the Premier has taken a very resolute stand as regards his determination to uphold law and order in a constitutional way, with the opposition in Parliament entirely behind him. The course of events will therefore he watched with very keen interest.