THE OTHER LABOR QUESTION

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1920, Page 8

THE OTHER LABOR QUESTION

DICTATORSHIP OF THE MANUAL WORKERS. WHAT THE ALLIANCE OF L<VBOR MEANS. ' (Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare League.) During last month (November) a Conference representing 8();000 workers met as delegates to the Alliance of Labor when a resolution was passed that the aims and objects of the alliance should be more fully placed before the public in the various centres. Acting on that decision the President and Secretary of the N.Z. Waterside Worker!a Federation, in an interview with the Timaru Herald sta\ed the aims of the alliance to be as follows: — - ALLIANCE OF LABOR.

(1) To secure for the people of New Zealand economic representation in Parliament, that is to say, to lftve the Parliamentary representatives pf the people elected by groups of individual trades, from wharf laborers to bankers, rather than by the present haphazard method of geographical representation, whereby a member represents nothing but the voting shadows lie chases and the popularity that he can gain by jumping from one section of the public .to the other. It is felt that when all labor—and the alliance admits the labor of the financier, the doctor, as well as that of the blacksmith and the engineer—is represented in Parliament, then you will have the machinery of living cogged direct from the men as the lever in the House to their constitutents who are in their own trade, and by such a method efficiency without loss of transmission power will be most effectively reached. This method would make the theory of efficiency and more production an accomplished fact. (2) The next aim of the labor alliance is to give control of the manual carrying out of the different industries to the worker, who is in the best position to judge of the most effective and efficient methods, and being a responsible party and a sufferer by inefficiency, will be virtually each man an employer to see that his mates aim at efficiency,

(3) The third aim of the all'ance of lahor is one that, should claim the hearty approval and co-operation of the great bulk of the people of the Dominion, and that is to confine industrial disputes to the department in which they originate rather than allow to he repeated the industrial dislocations such as this country has experienced in the past.

PROFESSION'S ABOUT EFFICIENCY. Mr. Roberts said: ''The sole aim of the Xew Zealand Alliance of Labor was to supply the commodities required by the people of Mew Zealand with all efficiency and not strangle the welfare of the-country as is being done at the present time with the shortages which we are all painfully aware of."

Mr. Glover added: "Look at cement and the way your buildings are being held up here. I see a garage around the corner from this chamber which has been held up for months and months. And look at the new hospital. With the best intentions, and I understand the greatest desire for prosecution of this work, it is not yet finished. Looking round your town I seem to see buildings to-day in about the same state of completion that I saw six months ago, whereas if we had the efficient control of industry we would see that the labor of the country was concentrated in proportion to the demands upon it to supply the public with their immediate economic requirements."

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN. To commence with is it not the most ridiculous sham and humbug for these men, Messrs. Roberts and Glover, to he preaching about efficiency and making the specious plea that if only the industries were handed over to the control of the manual workers the output would be fully maintained. The facts are wellknown that, in the coal mines and in waterside transport, the workers have had a large measure of control which has been deliberately abused to the great injury of the general public. We are short of cement because of shortage of coal, and that latter shortage lias in large measure been duo to "stop-work miectings, go-Blow practices, sectional strikes, and a general attitude of don't care a damn for anybody but ourselves" on the part of the coal miners organisations. In respect to waterside work we have had the same exhibition of i strikes and stop-work on all sorts of .specious pleas. For men who have not | produced the goods with the large amount of control they have had to say, give us all control and the public will not go short, borders on an audacity of

pure impudence. This other labor party named the alliance of labor has apparently a programme of its own, distinct from the political programme of the N.Z. Labor I Party. It advocates the Soviet system Jof representation in Parliament on the basis of occupation, making the concession that doctors and financiers should [actually be recognised. The fact that j this bolshevist plank conflicts with the political Labor Party's plank of proportional representation does not evidently disturb the industrial would be politicians. Their second aim is to hand over all "control of the manual carrying out of the industries to the worker." Lack worker his own employer is their formula. This is the bolslievism that Russia tried and was forced to abolish because of the great decrease in output. The-third aim of "confining industrial disputes to the department in which they originate" would undoubtedly have the hearty approval of the public,, but think of' the glaring hypocrisy of men professing such an aim at the same time advocating the establishment of a labor "Council of Action'' on the recent British pattern which contemplated and advised a general strike of all industries throughout the 'United Kingdom.

The public-wants to confine industrial disputes if they cannot he prevented. On the evidence presented it cannot be believed thai/ these alliance of labor men are honest in the professions they make. The three things notable in this pronouncement of the'industrial Labor Party are:— (1) A policy of political Sovietisni. (2) A declaration to capture the industries of the Dominion without consideration for the rights of present owners. (■'l) False 'professions of concern for industrial efficiency and peace. The statements are cunningly and speciously worded but reduced to plain blunt terms, they advocate a dictatorship of the manual workers over everybody else, and no doubt the leaders have in view their appointment as commissionaires after the example ' Lenin And Tr&iaky.