NO WORK, NO FOOD

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 58, 9 March 1936, Page 5

NO WORK, NO FOOD

N.S.W. RELIEF BUNGLE.

HOW NOT TO DO IT. MINING STRIKE SIDELIGHT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, March 3. A remarkable illustration of the way in which Government policy should not he administered has just come to light in the southern mining district. The general rule in regard to the issue of food relief is that if men refuse work under reasonable conditions their families shall not receive the assistance usually available from the State.

It happens that there has been a strike in progress # at the Helensburgh mine for some months past, the men insisting that they ought to be allowed to leave more pillars to ensure the safety of the workings, and the company maintaining that no sueh precaution is necessary.

About 120 miners struck, and as the mine had then to close down, and it employs nearly 400 men, there are twice as many unemployed as strikers in the district. It occurred to some official in the Department that the rule "no work, no food relief" should apply here, and an order was consequently issued that the unemployed must accept work in the Helensburgh mine or relief work would stop, and their families would forfeit their right to food relief.

As the men contend strongly that the mine is at present unsafe this meant that a large number of the unemployed were ordered to choose between risking their lives and seeing their families starve, and naturally there was a great outcry in the district speedily repeated in the public Press. Public meetings were held on the South Coast, strong opiu-

ions were expressed, and a deputation representing all sections of the South Coast community waited on the Premier urging him to rescind the obnoxious decree.

Happily Mr. Stevens was wise in time, and an order was published providing for the issue of "start work dockets" to the iinemployed, who will now be set to relief work, enabling their families to secure food supplies.

No doubt the issue of the original order was a stupid bureaucratic blunder, but no matter who was responsible Mr. Stevens and his colleagues must shoulder the responsibility and bear the blame. It is quite easy to represent such measures in a particularly odious light, and at one influential meeting in the southern district a resolution was carried which "emphatically condemned the Government's attempt to use unfortunate women and children as a weapon to force the miners of Helens-

burgh to accept employment at the colliery without any right to stipulate for safety methods."

Of course Mr. Stevens did not intend this, but Mr. Lang and the "Labour Daily" will go on saying so to the end of time, and plenty of people will believe them.