WORK AND WAGES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 18, 21 January 1914, Page 5

WORK AND WAGES.

SERIOUS INCONVENIENCE.

tßy Electric Telegraph—Copyright!

[United Press Association.] (Received 9.5 a.in. % >

Sydney, January 21

J The wharfmens strike against working overtime continues, and shipping is much harrassed. An official statement published by the Steamship Owners Association complains that the men acted without any warning against the assurance given to the companies that the stevedores' work would proceed without interruption, and the statement points' out that serious inconvenience has been caused to shipowners, including the Union Company who had to send the Maheno to Newcastle on Friday night with 250 tons of undischarged cargo aboard, and whose Sydney wharf is greatly congested, and altogether 1000 tons of outward cargo is shut out of the company's steamers.

■ Mr Hughes attributes the wharf | trouble to a handful of irresponsible 'extremists who are a menace to Union. [ism and a hundred times more danIgerous than the forces of Capitalism. I They flout the decisions of their I unions as readily as they do the laws !of the country. Unionism, if it is to survive, must deal with them. He hoped the Sydney branch of the waterside workers federation would realise the vital importance of the 1 matter, and not permit itself to be | shipwrecked. FUTILITY OF STRIKES. London, January 19. The Board of Trade statistics, supplemented by the Trade Unions' returns show that the loss of wages in 1.0 organised industries from stoppages due to disputes of all kinds in the past decade was £17,413,188. The net gain in wages resulting from the disputes was £2,714,340, leaving a loss of £14,698,840, but the workers as a whole obtained in the decade an increase of fifteen million sterling, chiefly through the conciliation machinery and working agreements. Of every hundred strikes of lockouts in the decade, employers won fifty, the workers twenty-five and twenty-five were compromised.

MELBOURNE STEVEDORES.

Melbourne, January 21.

The stevedores, by a big majority, decided to continue work pending a further conference of shipowners.