The Sun WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1928 INDUSTRIAL DISORDER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 475, 3 October 1928, Page 8

The Sun WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1928 INDUSTRIAL DISORDER

r r O thousand coal miners in New South Wales have been driven out of work by the waterside workers’ strike at all Australian ports, and unless militant unionism regains such common sense as it once had, the number of idle colliers will leap quickly to thirteen thousand. This paralysis of a great industry, which happens to be free of any troubles of its own at the moment, is inevitably one of the many serious consequences that follow an attempt to settle industrial disputes by means of illegal strife, rowdyism, and mob violence. Now that the Federal Government of Australia and the shipowners together have mustered enough courage to break the watersiders’ strike and get on with the vital work of the Commonwealth, the strikers, or at least their eloquent representatives, appeal for active sympathy with their dutiful fight for liberty. Their tragic cry would have the shrill note of an hysterical farce were it not for the fact that, in the process of struggling for freedom, the maritime trade of Australia is shackled. A conference of the maritime unions has been discussing alternative proposals, and may soon find a way out of an untenable position. One of these characteristic motions naively states that, realising the united efforts of the Federal Government and the shipowners to smash all the marine and transport unions, the conference, having done everything possible to avert an industrial upheaval, has now no alternative hut to fight for the freedom and liberty of the members of the unions. It is absurd to suggest that the Federal Government has sought to curb the liberty of industrial Labour. Though there often has been occasion for it, no one in authority has ever threatened to put the workers of Australia into leg-irons. The Prime Minister has been anything hut provocative or harsh; indeed, Mr. Stanley Bruce, for years, in the face of provocation, has symbolised patience on a monument. It was only when the waterside workers declared they would not work under the Arbitration Court award and openly defied the law that the Federal Government at last decided to overcome its chronic political timidity and excessive politeness and take action against the hold-up of the Commonwealth’s shipping trade. The Government made regulations under the new Transport Workers Act providing that on and after the first day of this month jobs on the waterfront could he held only by licensed workers. That was not an intolerable abuse of the liberty of industrial unionists. It merely imposed on free workers the same condition which normally is thrust upon doctors, lawyers, plumbers, publicans, barmaids, hawkers, and motorists. Incidentally, of course, the licensing of volunteer waterside workers provides a guarantee that the law of the country shall be obeyed. And in order to make the regulation effective the Federal Government has reinforced its aroused determination with the protective power of authority. This protection of volunteer workers was needed, as witness the use of bombs and bottles by one side and the play of policemen’s batons by the other. If misguided workers will resort to violence instead of obeying an industrial law which did not affect their high wages and comparatively easy working conditions, they must be prepared to accept disciplinary violence in return. That is all there is to the complaint of the unions against interference with their liberty and freedom. They still are getting liberty and freedom, but not the one-sided kind they have exercised so long at the grievous expense of their country. Labour has its rights, hut the Law must he supreme, and must make an end to industrial disorder and hooliganism.