Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1909. DICTATORIAL LABOURERS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4457, 2 September 1909, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2,1909. DICTATORIAL LABOURERS.

The general public are interested in all labour disputes* Everybody is interested in seeing fair play between master and man. In the labour world it is specially true that we are ail members one of another, and if one member suffer the whole corporate body of Society suffers. Te Aroha is linked to-* gether with the remotest parts of the Dominion where labour is em* ployed, and it is therefore instructive and interesting to watch the progress of any disputes and amicable negotiations between employers and employees. We have always tried to hold the scales of justice evenly between the two great bodies of Labourers and Capitalists. That is the true policy and the best for the workers. Those who hold the scales unevenly and flatter the working men and cagole them into a false and improper attitude towards employers, are no friends of the workers, but are some of their worst enemies. Labour agitators and political mischief-makers and votecatchers are of that class' Those at the bottom of the labour strike at the Otira end of the Arthur’s Pass tunnel, are said to be of the agitator class. Mr Murdock McLean is publicly reported to have said to a press interviewer at Wellington : “ The whole point at issue is, who are to be bosses—-we or the men ? During all the years we hare hsen

employers of labour we have hitherto not had the slightest . semblance of a strike, the reason I being that we have made it an i economic principle to pay our men ! more liberally than the prevailing rates.” On another occasion at Christ* church, where Mr McLean laid the whole case before the public, he said : “ Some 60 men workng at the Canterbury end have elected to accept our conditions in reference to the lamps, and are still working. | We believe that the trouble at the ! Otira end is mainly being caused by : a few union men and agitators, I and that if a free vote had been : taken of the men on the works there would have been no trouble.” But about two hundred men have thrown themselves out of work or have been thrown out by mates, and, perhaps, innocent wives and children are suffering in consequence. Tradesmen are said to be already feeling the pinch. The Hon. J. A. Millar said in September, 1908, “ The mischief - maker and the agitator must go.” This dispute appears to have originated in the men failing to take proper care of their masters’ property, and when efforts were made to secure that matter of bare justice, the men put on airs, egged on, perhaps, by agitators, and went out on strike. Others who did not strike were afterwards forced into idleness by those who struck, because a particular kind of the work accumulated on hand and got ahead of immediate requirements through the strikers not doing their part. A certain class of workers are getting too much like spoiled children. A paternal Government having If at a ready ear to industrial c implaints, and done its best to mitigate the position of toilers, the latter seemed to get it into its head that it had only to ask and to receive, and that the employees, not the employers, were masters of the situation. That seems to have been the feeling in other places besides New Zealand. But the workers have had some rude awakenings and they are destined, to receive others, because in the first place the hod-carrier can never take the place of the architect, nor the pick and shovel man the place of the engineer. They could not dp the work and, another thing is, the employers do not intend to let them try. An engine driver may be a first rate and useful man on a railway engine—we admire him in his place—but to entrust him with the direction of the construction of bridges and railways is quite another thing. Capitalists have rights as well as labourers, and it is most unwise to rush too light-heartedly into an industrial fight, as the manner of some is. While these lines are still wet we read as follows I “ At the half - yearly meeting of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company to day the report showed a loss of £59,000. The chairman stated that the men had sacrificed £266,000 in wages during the strike, while the company’s losses from the same cause had been £33,60Q. ft was not the intention of the company to fully rpoppn the mine until the price of metals justified the payment of the wages set out in the Arbitration Court’s award.” That is generally the issue of a Strike. Both sides suffer, but the muscular workers suffer more than the brain-working This Otira strike is in violation of an industrial award. As Mr MciLean put it : “ There is an award in existence, and that if we have com* mitted any breach of it they have their legal remedy. Instead of that, they have elected to strike, and have refused to go to work, by doing which they have themselves committed a breach of the award, and now cannot claim any of the benefits that may be attached to the conditions of the award.” If men will not obey the law that at their own bidding was put into the Statute ffoojf. except when it pleases them, then they must not /be surprised if they suffer and forfeit public sympathy, Since the above was written we are glad to learn that the difficulty has just been settled. The parties to the dispute accepted a recommendation from the Conciliation Commissioner to the effect that the union would undertake to indemnify the employers for any wilful damage or loss that might occur in connection with the company's lamps, so far as members of the union were concerned.