SOLIDARITY AMONG THE SEAMEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 734, 6 August 1929, Page 8

SOLIDARITY AMONG THE SEAMEN

THE news that the Australian Government has accepted the challenge of a refractory seamen’s union would he hailed as a startling departure if there were any evidence of sincerity behind it. Unfortunately, the Federal Government has a habit of saying one thing and doing another. Its threatened prosecution of the wealthy New South Wales coal interests for alleged breaches of the Arbitration Act was withdrawn after the information had actually been laid. It is true that this was done in what the Government considered would be the best interests of lasting industrial peace, but so far the move has signally failed to promote that objective. If the mineowners had been guilty of instituting a lock-out, there was provision for that offence in the Commonwealth laws, and the Government would have strengthened its position by enforcing that law. If the Government now undertakes to force the issue against the Victorian Seamen’s Union to its bitter conclusion, it will he open to the reproach that there is discrimination between employers and employed, between capital and labour. The faintest breath of such a suspicion is fatal to hopes of concord. Vet, in what other way than by legal processes the Seamen’s Uni6n can be brought to heel is not clear. So far the trouble has not taken serious form, but the truculent attitude of the Victorian union, which openly threatens to engineer a maritime liold-up on account of a somewhat petty dispute with another union in which by all the rules of class solidarity it should be in complete harmony, gives the Government, the shipowners and the people, who after all are the ultimate sufferers, sufficient cause for concern.

Tlie case illustrates a cardinal point in industrial preference. If there is to be preference to unionists—and no one seriously challenges the ethical value of that principle—its enforcement should be absolutely conditional on the maintenance of internal harmony within the unions. It is patently ridiculous that, because one maritime union happens to be jealous of another on grounds that in the ultimate analysis may prove to be nothing more than a private quarrel, the subscribers to one should be favoured at the expense of the other. One salient difficulty with unionism in Australia seems to be the tendency of tlie leaders to quarrel among themselves, and to favour objectionable methods. In the case of Mr. O’Neill, secretary of the ictorian Seamen’s L nion, his impudent letter indicates that he is as sceptical as most other people will be of the real earnestness of tlie Federal Government in its latest gesture against defiant unionism.