THREATENED BUS STOPPAGE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 215, 11 September 1945, Page 4

THREATENED BUS STOPPAGE

T AST Thursday people who had intended to travel by bus between 10.30 a.m. and 1 p.m. found the normal service suspended because of a stopwork meeting of drivers. On Friday they learned that on Monday there might be no buses at all. The service on Monday and to-day ran as usual, but to-day they are informed that there will be no buses after 6.30 to-night. It has been very deliberately determined that one of the community's most essential services shall be stopped, unless the drivers' demands are complied with. This is a decision hardly excusable in any circumstances; in the present circumstances it is outrageous.

What are the circumstances? The union, because of its conduct in a dispute in January, 1944, has been deregistered, and so deprived of the facilities, too lightly valued, which are available to all unions registered under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. Its demand last week, a demand backed by an ultimatum, was that a tribunal be set up to consider its claims. . The acting-Minister of Labour" complied with this demand. Up to this point it is likely that the public, while not liking the union's tactics, was disposed to believe that they were induced by impatience to secure finality in a long-standing dispute. But it now learns that, because circumstances made it impossible for the tribunal to begin its hearings immediately, the union members intend to cease work until it does begin. The unreasonableness of this is so glaring that it is astonishing that a body of men should countenance it. They have long enjoyed a high degree of public goodwill—which is an important part of their working conditions—and they are now allowing their jepresentatives to order an action which, if pursued, will replace that goodwill by hostility. And all because a tribunal, already promised by the Minister, cannot sit the moment they want it! Before they take this the drivers should give common sense a chance.