MORE FOLLY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 276, 20 November 1926, Page 8

MORE FOLLY.

It was hoped that the trouble that developed recently in the freezing Works i at Hawke's Bay would stop there, but | unfortunately it has dot. The failure of i seasonal hands to respond to a call in { Auckland yesterday, coupled with the attitude of hands in other places, indicates serious possibilities. It should first of all be observed that these men have J been working under an Arbitration Court | award, so that their attitude is a flouting of the Court. Secondly, one might have thought that what has happened in England would have turned the men away from thoughts of strikes. The miners in England must accept defeat on terms no better, if as good, as they could have obtained months ago. They have helped to inflict losses on the country amounting to hundreds of millions. If slaughtermen in New Zealand refuse to work, no one will benefit. The works will be kept going by some means, but there will be loss, and that loss will fall on the whole community, but primarily on the class that is suffering the most—the farmer. The net result will be that the community will be poorer. At the present moment, with prices of dairy produce disappointingly 16V, and the future uncertain, New Zealand needs nothing so much aa industrial peace, and an appeal may be made to the labour organisations concerned not to be so foolisU-as to add to the country's difficulties. A meeting of freezing works hands at HaWke's Bay, after hearing an address by an official of the Alliance of Labour, resolved to ask the workers of Britain to boycott New Zealand meat. This is a request both futile and mean, and if the Alliance of Labour cannot do better than that it doeß not deserve any of the confidence of unions. Little has been heard of the Alliance lately, but that it should lend itself to such folly does not increase one's respect for it.