The Daily News WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1922. INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 December 1922, Page 4

The Daily News WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1922. INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES.

The importance of the problem of industrial disputes in the Dominion is indicated by .the fact that in the recently issued Official Year Book of New Zealand for 1921-22, seventeen pages are devoted to the subject. Besides a very comprehensive review of industrial affairs, there are a large number of tables and other statistics relating to these disputes, their loss in working days and wages, together with the causes and methods of settlement. It is evident that considerable care has been taken in the collection of a mass of information from reliable sources, enabling fairly complete data to be placed before the public. The only point on which it has been found impossible to accurately present is the duration of the disputes and the number of workers actually involved therein, but, in all probability the statistics set forth are approximately correct. It is stated that the great majority of the 75 disputes during ' the year 1920 were of short duration, thirty being in the mining industry, and only two being serious. One of these was at Waihi, involving over 800 workers and a loss of more than eight thousand pounds in wages. The other was at Huntly, in which 418 men took part, the los§ of wages being over £9OOO. From the year 1906 to 1920 there were 392 strikes, affecting 551 firms and 47,200 workers, the year 1913 being remarkable for a strike epidemic, there being 73 disputes, of which 39 were sympathetic, while in 1920 the total of disputes was 75, the highest number of the period, involving 106 firms and 9612 workers, the number of days lost being 54,735, and the estimated amount of wages lost being £40,423. Taranaki and Marlborough were the only provinces in which no disputes arose during that year, and it is somewhat of a coincidence that in the 1906-20 period each of these provinces had only the small total of five disputes, the majority of which occurred in the strike-epidemic year 1913, Taranaki having the smallest number of men affected (107) during the fifteen years of any district in the Dominion. As might be expected, wages formed the bone of contention in nearly half the disputes. It is interesting to note that of the 392 disputes, twenty-eight were settled by conciliation or arbitration, four by negotiations under the Labor Disputes Investigation Act, sev enty-five by compromise, fiftynine by the substitution for strikers of other workers, one hundred and eighty by other mclbods, and forty-six By processes not stated. It it evident from these statistics that conciliation and arbitration have played, quite a minor part in settling industrial disputes, and that in the great majority of cases the par- , ties have solved the problem in I their own way. This fact may be

taken to emphasise the contention which has frequently been advanced, that if the parties to a dispute will only use their com-mon-sense, get together and thresh out their difference/, all strikes could be avoided, and the shocking waste of time and money caused by direct action altogether eliminated. Apparently, the root cause of all industrial disputes is lack of confidence between workers and employers. When making this closing speech at the recent International Labor Conference, held at Geneva last month, Lord Burnham, who has for two years filled the chair of the Conference, quoted from Mr. Lloyd George’s speech at Leeds, in which he said: “There is another provision in the Treaty of Versailles of which the full value has not yet been appreciated. That is the great labor provision which has been introduced in order to improve the conditions of labor by international co-operation. You will greatly improve the condition of the workers by the process of international confidence.” It was just that mutual confi dence, stated Lord Burnham, which the Conference had to embody and increase. Real and substantial progress in international, as well as national, agreements can only be made in the full light of knowledge and Reason. The aim of all measures which seek to advance industrial peace should be to promote the well-being of the vast majority of the people in all parts of the world: to ensure that work shall be as healthy, as happy, and as productive as the skill and energy of men can make it, in the spirit of good understanding and goodwill. A full measure of sympathy is felt by the community for the great mass of hard-working men and women. Unhappily the workers’ worst enemies are of their own household —-the extremists, who are dominated by the crazy theories of Bolshevism and take their orders from Soviet leaders. That is why the solution of the industrial problem must be international.