The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH AER INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1927. INDUSTRIAL PEACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 282, 29 November 1927, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH AER INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1927. INDUSTRIAL PEACE.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistanot, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can da.

It is remarkable how often the indispensable factor of co-operation between Capital and Labour is lost sight of in industrial disputes, and the present movement at Home to promote closer and more amicable relations between the two great forces which dominate the industrial sphere is one of the most encouraging features of recent economic development.

The fact that the initial step toward this end was taken by a number of influential employers and economists —Sir Alfred Mond and Sir Joseph Stamp among others—might have been expected to prejudice the workers against any such scheme or proposal. More especially the Labour organisations might well view with anxiety the progress of a movement that, by encouraging the workers to identify their interests more closely with those of the employers, would tend in the long run to render trade unions superfluous and to supersede them altogether. Yet, in spite of these difficulties, we learn that the General Council of the Trades Unions Congress has come to a decision favourable to negotiations on the basis indicated first by Sir Alfred Mond and later by Mr. Baldwin. The general idea underlying the scheme is an attempt to reconstitute industrial relations no longer as between "master and men," but as between co-partners jointly concerned for the welfare of their common enterprise, and though details are of necessity still lacking, and any conjecture as to the results of such a discussion must be premature, a conference on such lines is clearly a step in the right direction.

Permanent industrial peace is possible only when both parties desire it sincerely and .work for it earnestly. In other words, the "will to peace" is just as indispensable for the production of industrial harmony as it is for the preservation of peace between the nations. It is therefore very encouraging to note that, at the present juncture, the representatives of even the more militant sections of the workers at Home are evincing a strong desire for conciliation and compromise as against industrial warfare. Mr. Frank Hodges, speaking for a large body of miners, said recently that the strike and the lock-out are being rapidly superseded, and even Mr. Ben Tillett, once the "stormy petrel" of the Labour movement, has declared for "intelligent co-operation" and the careful observance of pledges and promises to end "the present industrial chaos." Opening under such auspices, the proposed conference should speedily secure a large measure of success.