The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. FRIDAY, MAY 16, 1941. UNIONS AND ELECTIONS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 114, 16 May 1941, Page 8

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

FRIDAY, MAY 16, 1941. UNIONS AND ELECTIONS

For the eauae that lacks asrietanoa, For the wrong that needs resistane•» For the future in the distance, And the good that eee can do.

A candidate for local body membership in Wellington, Mr. 1-1. L. Xathan, commented in the course

of an election speech on the considerable number of union

secretaries among the Labour

party's nominees, and asked: ''How can these Labour secretaries do

justice to the city and the ratepayers and have an impartial mind while they are under the dictation of Labour unions? There is no doubt these secretaries, only naturally, have to bow to that authority in order that they can keep their employment." To this suggestion five "Labour union officials" took strong exception, and sought and obtained an interview with Mr. Nathan. There are two versions of what happened at that interview, and the public can use its judgment as to which is the more likely to be correct. But the suggestion publicly made by Mr. Nathan is an important one, of wide interest, and the oddest feature of the Wellington affair is that objection to it chou'd have taken the form it did. For no one is more fond than the average Labour candidate of asserting that those opposed to him should not be elected because they are the spokesmen and the tools of some particular "vested interest," or of "vested interests" in general. There are vested interests" which in every election try to secure that their interests do not go unrepresented and undefended. They have a right to do so. But a fact insufficiently realised—and obviously the Labour party does not want attention drawn to it at election time—is that unionism is now one of the greatest "vested interests" in this country, and that in its extreme manifestations it puts its own gain first and the welfare of the community second.

The "vested interest" of unionism is promoted by the union secretary in particular. That is his job, and within the limits formerly observed ~~ and . still observed by some—it is a legitimate and useful job. But the increasing tendency of union secretaries to seek local body office raises a great many questions, the nature of which was indicated in Mr. Nathan's suggestion. Every local body is an employer, and its employees are unionised, often in several unions, with which it has to deal on a variety of matters. If the secretary of a union which contains, inter alia, some of the local body's employees is elected a member of that body, whose interests does he represent? Mr. Nathan would answer that question by asking, "Who pays his salary?" That answer would be too harsh to cover all cases, but of some it is perfectly true. There are some union secretaries in Auckland, as elsewhere, who seem, from their actions, to admit no public interest that is not their unions' interest. And even in the best of cases, membership of a local body by a union secretary must sometimes involve an embarrassing conflict of loyalty and of duty. The community, for its own protection, has a law strictly limiting the pecuniary interest which any member of a local body can have in any of its decisions. There may soon be clearly appreciated a need for a law similarly restricting the opportunities of union secretaries on local bodies.