STRIKE IN SYDNEY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 July 1943, Page 3

STRIKE IN SYDNEY

AGAINST EMPLOYMENT OF NON=LNIONISTS SETTLED IN FAVOUR OF UNIONS. ■ SOME EMPHATIC PROTESTS. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) SYDNEY, July 17. Twelve non-unionists, working in a privately-controlled Government munitions annexe, have decided “to place production before principle,” and seek release from their employment. The refusal of these non-unionists, nine of them women, to join a union, led to a strike which has lasted for nine weeks and involves four unions. The strike has caused a loss in wages of £33,000 and in man hours of about a quarter of a million —equivalent to 116 men working for more than one year. In a joint statement, the non-union-ists said the company told them it feared the Federal Government would heed the requests/of the “law-breaking unions” to take from the company the contracts which it held and distribute them elsewhere. Steps taken by the authorities to settle this strike have been the subject of wide criticism. “Today we celebrate a victorious advance towards a trade union State,” says the Sydney “Telegraph,” editorially. “The closing of this annexe has ended an attempt to affirm the right of all men and women to decide for themselves whether they should join a union or not. The struggle has established this principle—when the law of Parliament and the lav/ of the Trades Hall secretariat conflict, the trade union law is supreme. A few more such victories of the trade union over national law and Parliament House in Canberra wil become a quaint anachronism.”