CROOKED INDUSTRIALISM.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 January 1921, Page 8

CROOKED INDUSTRIALISM.

CO-OPERATION AND STRIKE POLICY COMBINED. SHIPPING COMPANIES AND ( (Contributed by the New Zealand Welfare League.) The N.Z. Waterside Workers’ Federation Conference now sitting at Timaru. has, according to Reports, two main purposes before it. One is to effect a plan of co-operation with the shipping companies by which they will jointly carry on the department of the transport industry they are engaged in, and the other is to procure the establishment of a labor “Council of Action” on the pattern of what was designed in Great Britain, of which, Mr. J. H. Thomas said, “the measure was desperate and dangerous, no mere strike, but nothing less than a challenge to the constitution of tha country.” We make no apology for applying the term “crooked” to this business. The watersiders’ representatives are not children, but men of an age to be held responsible for their speed/ and co-operation with the employers and actions. To be plausibly considering their desire for a policy such as the “Council of Action” which called for a general paralysis of industry, is double dealing that could not possibly be 'described as straight. There cannot be honest co-operation .and declarations of general strike policy together. That sort of tinkering with Industrial affairs is a fraud and a most dangerous one because it is an affirmation of contradictory principles that are calculated to deceive and betray the .great body of the public. WHERE STAND THE SHIPPING COMPANIES. We cannot understand how representatives of the shipping companies, knowing as they must that this double dealing in the matter of principles obtains, are apparently content to ignore the fact and go on doing business as if everything was all right. They may regard the “Council of Action” talk as mere hot air fulmination, but they must be simpler than we take them to be if they do not understand that the men who are thus talking “direct action” are ready to translate it into practice whenever the occasion appears to them to be opportune. There has been sufficient proof of that to convince any one, and yet we understand the shipping companies’ representatives will meet ithe syndicalist advocates with the view of arranging for co-operation and joint control of the industry. Surely a sense of business responsibility should first firmly demand that before any control of the industry is conceded, the Waterj side Federation shall renounce its policy of direct actiohism which threatens “the stability not only of that in- ' dustry, but of industries in general. No doubt the flipping companies want peace. We w all want peace, but not peace at the sacrifice of principles; not peace with surface co-operation and underground warfare; not peace with the ever present threat of direct action, like a revolver at one’s head: not peace in which one side is acting in co-operation with the other, and that other is using the benefits of the cooperation. and at the same time advocating a “Council of Action” and other moves that would if given effect to destroy the business, or drive cut the partner. This is not peace, but the most treacherous mode of warfare. It hold-- the shield of friendship to cover the body of hatred.

We have -no hesitation in saying that if the shipping, companies are prepared to condone these most vicious anomalies, they must be held equally responsible with the men who are professing cooperation, and preaching what would effect general industrial paralysis: neither, in this event, can. be held to have any regard for the general interests of the public.