LIGHT ON THE COAL STRIKE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 236, 6 October 1942, Page 2

LIGHT ON THE COAL STRIKE

AFTER the unanimous finding of the national disputes committee concerning the dispute at the Pukemiro colliery no doubt can exist that the five pairs of men originally concerned deliberately adopted a "go-slow" policy, which resulted in the manager's refusing to make up their wages to the specified minimum. The committee also found, unanimously, that the tonnage rate applicable to the section of the mine in which the dispute occurred should be reconsidered, as it has been the cause of dissatisfaction to the miners concerned since the section was first opened. In other words, five pairs of miners had a grievance, which could have been, and ought to have been, ventilated by what the committee described as "proper and well-established methods," but they chose other methods, with results now notorious. As so often in the past, it has been shown that once men resort to "direct action" to end a grievance, the original grievance is submerged. In this case the qxiestion, so far as it was commonly understood, was whether or not the men had been "going slow." Now, after so much else has happened, the committee has detected and defined the original grievance—the apparent cause of the "go-slow"—and has strongly urged that it be investigated and settled by proper methods and without delay. Another lesson, also not new, relates to the secrecy of the parties to the dispute. It has been left to the committee not only to describe the origin of the dispute, but to reveal that although the mine manager rightly refused to pay the minimum wage to the ten men who were going slow he continued to make up the earnings of other miners when necessary. There was therefore no question of an "attack on the principle of the minimum wage." Both these important matters should have been elucidated, publicly, at an early stage, but mine owners and union alike refused to take advantage of the opportunity to make their cases public. The reason often given for secrecy In such circumstances is that publicity "will not help"; but it would be very hard to say whose interests were served by the secrecy with which the recent dispute was surrounded certainly not the interests of the public.