THE RIGHTS OF LABOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 205, 27 August 1912, Page 8

THE RIGHTS OF LABOUR.

(To the Editor.) | Sir, — remarks of the various em ployers at the annual meeting of their association make interesting reading to;----the average worker. The presiden-L . yearned for the workers and their de-1 pendents rendered idle as the result of I a stoppage of their employers' profit- j makingotherwise a strike— these terms: "This meant untold misery to the majority of the men going out, and . also in a more marked degree to the j wives and the helpless children of these workers." Very pathetic, but why is there no sympathy for the unemployed walking the streets and frequenting the water "front and various "jobs" during: this winter right here in Auckland? In I the waterside workers' waiting room j this last three months, many times for i a ship requiring one hundred men, say, four times that number have stood forward looking for the evasive "job" fact, there has been a substantial surplus of labour all —such a surplus that, if a strike were on and the same number of men were resulitantly idle, would cause shrieks of wrath from the Employers* A_socia-tion. Whatever drastic measures the above association recommends and the Government adopt to suppress strikes, they are bound to be ineffectual in practice, in the opinion of this scribe, inasmuch as the law and period which compelled the serf to wear his brass collar and labour on his lord's land (and nowhere else) without intermission have passed for ever. Or is a proposal being seriously made to put the clock back seven hundred years? Unionists have been frequently advised, if they object to things as they are in New Zealand, to leave and go elsewhere; let mc offer this advice to those employers who object to going "cap in hand" to interview Labour Depart— officials to comply with our very mild labour laws. With regard to the deadly bias against that wild revolutionary person, the paid union secretary, what about the Employers' Union secretary? One employer was flabbergasted (?■- ---to speak) at the idea of his colleague and tho Government recognising f "right to strike"—even after a secoi■•' ballot. Does the employer, when he "strikes" by closing his mine, mill, or factory, or "laying up" his ships, take a secret ballot of the public, his workers, or the shareholders (if a company) ? And supposing a .form of secret ballot were made obligatory on him by legislation, could he be compelled to still produce and sell his commodity? No, Sir, any more than the worker is likely to submit to selling his commodity— labour power, whether manual or muscular (or both)under coercion.—l am, etc, WATERSIDE WORKER.