The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. THURSDAY, DEC. 16, 1920. THE OHUTU STRIKE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3654, 16 December 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

THURSDAY, DEC. 16, 1920. THE OHUTU STRIKE.

With which is incorporated “The Talhape Post and Waimariao News,”

• There must have been devilish counsels prevailing amongst the workers employed at the Ohutu Box IVlill to induce them to peremptorily leave their work at a time when most people are endeavouring to establish soccial and industrial peace To students of the economic situation it will be doubtful whether it was possible for the Box-mill men to choose a more ill-advised time for entering upon a determination to down tools and strike for everything in general and nothing in particular. However, the worst possible course was taken by the men. and the hitherto busy mill is silent, and is likely to remain idle and the men workless till well into the New Year. From the outset it seems that men of wild judgment got , the, ear of the whole staff, resulting in action unduly and unjustly precipitate. The strike was entered upon, if not against the advice* of 'the Union executive, then, without any consultation with the men selected, to .collaborate and adjudicate, and advise on such matters. They have gone on from one blunder to another until their employers had no choice but to grant all they required or refuse their demands and close down the mill. Whether designedly or not tlic time chosen to strike was when the most busy season of the year was just being entered upon; when the demand for butter boxes and cheese crates was at the flood, but the principle involved is of far more importance to industry and the progress of tthis Dominion than the lo§k of a season’s box and crate making at one mtH. Whether the men were prepared for the bourse their employers have taken remains to be disclosed; it is probable they were not. If they were, then the strike is likely to spread, and , the, visit of the One Big Union advocate to the whole timber-working district hereabout, may have something more to do with the small commencement | at Qhntu, which may only be intended as the fore-runner of something of a much more disastrous character. This journal has time after time repeated the old hackneyed truth, which does not permit of that workers can rule the world if they will but organise to do it in a constitutional way. It has also opposed everything savouring of, anarchy and revolution. Only as recent as the twenty-seventh of last August a timber-workers’ ward was made, and now, in December, a strike is declared, for something else. The Box-mill men issued a final demand and served it upon the employers on Tuesday morning at half-past ten, and it was of such a character that it was almost immediately refused. Other demands had preceded that of Tuesday, which resulted in the closing down of the which taken into consideration with the 'award made so late as the 27th August, seem of an impossible character, and it might be said they were framed so that a general stoppage of work could not be avoided. From information from some of the men it is apparent that a demand for an increase of wages over' the August award of from thirty to ninety per cent, could not be conceded by employers, and that, therefore, a strike was inevitable. If the strike-leaders were firm in their demand for iucreas-' ed wages their final demand, which was chiefly for recognition of their union, had nothing to do with the strike, any further than bringing the disagreement to a climax. Published reports leave no doubt about employers urging the men to take a less militant attitude; they repeatedly advised that work should be resumed until arrangements were made for an exhaustive discussion of the situation, and while the more sensible, humane men advocated that course, the more frenzied insisted upon a fight to a finish. They refused to allow time for Directors of the Box Company to cuss the demands and arrive at a course of action that would not clash with the views of their shareholders. From a long experience of New Zealand politics generally ? and of the labour movement particularly we have no hesitation in stating that the people of this Dominion are overwhelmingly of opinion that the fruits of Industry should be more justly, more humanely apportioned, and they would cast their votes in overwhelming preponderance for the general betterment of the masses. At the same time there is an overwhelming disgust of the methods of anarchism of the I.W.W, character. I.W.W. methods have shut down the Ohutu Box Mill, men have sought idleness rather than

follow a conciliatory course that would have kept their women and children in happiness and contentment over the season of Peace and Goodwill to all men. The extremists amongst the members of the King Country Sawmill and Timber Workers;’ Union will not have their Union registered in a constitutional way, that is, under the “Arbitration and Conciliation Act ” and yet they seek to enjoy all the advantages of the Act, while leaving themselves free to run little labour upheavals in their own w r ay and fashion. It must be admitted that the contention of employers who urge that no lasting good could result fnom their recognition of a free lance union which scorns to make use of the laws enacted for settling disputes between employers and employees, would be a reasonable attitude for them to take; and, sequentially, employees who prefer to throw up their employment rather than concede the right of stick conditions arc not taking up a reasonable attitude. For men to leave their work in a determined strike for recognition of their Union, which is not registered under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, by employers whose Union is registered under that Act, is an inscrutable blunder which, it is earnestly hoped, the men will recognise the folly and disadavantage of, and that they will take prompt steps to reinstate conciliatory methods in fairly settling,- the if it ds not already too late to re-open the whole question. ,As the matter now stands the men have no one to blame but themselves for being without work. They were repeatedly urged by the Manager of the Box t Company to resume work until some determination could be arrived at by a 'formal meeting of the Company’s Directors, but these counsels were rejected, until the situation culminated in a final demand being made by the men on the morning of the 14th December for recognition of a union not registered under the Arbitration Act. which was not conceded, and the men having refused to resume work unless their demands were granted, the Box Mill Company had no other alternative' than to close dawn their mill at the very commencement of the very busiest season of the year.