DEPRIVED OF DOLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 81, 6 April 1933, Page 9

DEPRIVED OF DOLE.

MINING COMMUNITY.

MINISTER'S HARSH ACTION.

MEN" FORCED TO SUBMIT.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, March 31,

The trouble over the Kurri. Kurri dole has not completely subsided yet. It will be remembered that about 140 men at Kurri, objecting to the conditions of relief work, and demanding award rates of pay, refused to answer the -'call-up," and were -therefore struck off the dole list. The men and their wives and families —about 400 people in''all—were thus left without sustenance, and the residents in the little town kept them going for about a week out of their scanty resources. Then the men, finding that the miners had declined to come out on strike on their behalf, submitted to the inevitable, and the relief works which had been closed down at Kurri were started again. Dole Stopped For Month. The men, in excusing their action, told the Minister that if they had accepted work on the Government's terms in the first place they would have been boycotted—"our lives would have been made a misery." But though Mr. Dunningham, Minister of Labour, put the men on the relief works list, Mr. Hawkins (in charge of food relief) decided that their action ought to be marked by some effective punishment, and he announced that the dole should not be issued' to them for a month from the date of their refusal to accept employment. Now, it may be possible to defend this decision on the ground of abstract justice, but to most people it seemed positively inhuman. For it was obvious that those who would suffer most and worst would be not the men, but their wives and children, who even while on the dole are often struggling againfit

semi-starvation, and the Minister's attitude was subjected to severe criticism. The "Labour Daily" expended much vituperative eloquence on the barbarity of the Government, but there was much force in its protest that "because men refused to be driven to break a principle which they hold dear as life, they are arbitarily condemned to starve, together with their wives and children, for one month." And if for one month, commented the "Labour Daily" bitterly, "why not six months—or six years 1" "Temper Justice With Mercy." Even the Nationalist Press, which is not in the habit of expending much sympathy on industrial malcontents, put in its protest, but unfortunately in a rather grudging tone. "Those who know the coalfields," said the "Sun," "will understand readily the plea that none dared to set himself against the agitators who forced the trouble, for fear of reprisals or persecution, so that while many of the men wished to accept and get to

work, they feared to do so. In these circumstances, and in view of the present attitude of the deluded victims of the it would ibe becoming if the Minister were to temper justice with mercy."

This lordly fashion of dealing out concessions is hardly likely to conciliate men and women exasperated by what they regard as just grievances and embittered 'by, poverty and starvation. The resentment engendered by this unfortunate incident is strong and deeply rooted, and the general opinion is that Mr. Hawkins—though he has now relented— handled a difficult situation very 'badly.