SECRETARY'S NOTE-BOOK.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 90, 6 December 1912, Page 7

SECRETARY'S NOTE-BOOK.

By M. LARACY. WAIHI AND THE ARBITRATION ACT. After 20 years' battling in the Labor movement, it- hurts one to hear workers who are wearing bowyangs and have corns on their hands standing with the goldbusjs to decry the Federation of Labor. Waihi's strike will do more to educate the workers of this country than all else, because it will make us think. It will make many workers ask questions such as those: What was the strike about)? Whom was if against? And when the workers oF New Zealand ask themselves those questions WV'hi will not be lost. We have an Arbitration Act in wliich one clause stands out on its own, and if placed there by the class which is crushing and has always crushed the workers, it could not have been more effective in the grinding-down o f the workers than it is. 1 maintain that it is the most effective weapon the opponents oi 1 the working-class nioveuioa >i wield to-day. ' Let us review it quietly, and after so doing" ask ourselws a question : Can the employers in any industry not at any time find 15' ready to be false to their comrades: . The answer must be, Yes; and if they are not here, they ?au be imported. Some ■ Conservative organs which champion Massey may trufchftlTly . say that the old Liberal Pffty is responsible for that clause being in the I.C. and A. Act. This, I am prepaid to admit, is true. That clause was inserted to allow of a union being formed in an industry and industrial district where no union was in existence at the time of the formation. What is the position to-day? Lisufli, yo , shearers, you seamen, you farm laborers—something is being read into the Act which was never intended by those who framed it. Massey knows and Herdman knows that it was not the intention of those who framed that Act to allow 15 members, or, in fact., 15 of anything brought along by masters, to form a union to coerce a majority and bring them back under the I.C. and A. Act, although they to a man are opposed to being under it. Wliere is this going to stop? Let Massey tell the workers of the country straight that he is going to enforce compulsory arbitration. I was one of those who in June last waited upon the Premier and placed the facts before him. He gave the usual promise that the Act would be amended, etc., etc., but to-day what do we find? Nothing done.