BRISBANE TRAMWAYS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 306, 23 December 1912, Page 5

BRISBANE TRAMWAYS.

MANAGER'S INTIMIDATION. THE COURT INTERVENES. MELBOURNE, December 22Mr Justice Higgins made a lengthy statement in the Arbitration Court dealing with the case brought by the Tramway Employees' Association against the Brisbane and Adelaide tramway companies. He said the Brisbane company refused to consider an agreement. It objected to everything. The manager (Mr Badger) adhered to the time-honoured policy of the absolute control of an employer over his employees, and the existing agreement left the amount of wages payable absolutely at his discretion. Mr Justice Higgins said he regretted to have to make an order in regard to the Brisbane company's men, which he had always previously refused to make—that was, preference to unionists. The history of the case, said Mr Justice Higgins, was painful, even ghastly, in the eyes of those who fancied there was liberty of association in Australia. No doubt nearly all the men who attempted to resign from the Brisbane Association did so under the intimidation of the man who could give them or withhold from them the means of living. Mr Badger know that if the employees resented the existing conditions of labour they feared unemployment more, and in his capacity of benevolent despot he made ruthless use of that knowledge, playing off the natural desire of the men to support their wives and children against their efforts to unite for an improvement of conditions. He did not desire to restrict Mr Badger in the choice of employees, but the law left him no other means but preference to unionists of protecting members of the association from Mr Badger's intimidation.