NO STRIKES IN NEW ZEALAND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3753, 19 February 1907, Page 2

NO STRIKES IN NEW ZEALAND.

The slaughtermen at Wellington and Timaru who are not working have not struck. They have knocked off work and stopped earning money merely tor amusement. There is an Arbitration Act in New Zealand and it is illegal to strike. Nay, according to our most prominent politicians, it is impossible. Still the fact remains that for some reason or other the slaughtermen are not working. It is presumed all the slaughtermen who have refused to work on account of a small difference of opinion as to the value ol their services will be summoned to Court to show cause. It may be that under the free and unfettered law of the country, the men may go to gaol. The placing of every slaughterman in New Zealand in gaol for breaking the law wouldn’t kill much meat at the abattoirs would it ? If it is impossible for men to strike in New Zealand why have the slaughtermen struck ? If it is possible what is the good of the law ? If the law can punish the whole of the body of workers who decide to knock off work, can the law arrange to do the work while the workers are in gaol ? Is the Conciliation and Arbitration Act an act that passes as a reasonably decent measure while the men are content with existing conditions, or is it any good whatever when there is trouble ? Does the

Arbitration Act guarantee freedom from strikes when the Arbitration Court benefits the employee only or does it guarantee the same freedom even when the Court gives the employer ‘ a show ’? Would it be popular to throw a body of vvoikers in gaol and would the State keep the grass-widows and children or send them to gaol to keep the fathers company? Would it be better to repeal the Arbitration Act or to allow this precedent of a strike to be the means of making other bodies of workers strike and therefore to be likely to go to gaol ? Is this slaughtermen’s strike the beginning of the end of the Arbitration Act and would any infrequent strike that might happen after its repeal cost the country half what the administration of the Act costs ? Maybe we are wrong, but we fancy we sec the Act lying dead with employer and employee holding a tangi over its remains.