GOVERNMENT AND THE BLACKBALL STRIKERS.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 13093, 18 April 1908, Page 8

GOVERNMENT AND THE BLACKBALL STRIKERS.

Wβ are glad to see that the Government recognise the impropriety of attempting to solve the Blackball difficulty by giving -the strikers employrnont on the Government co-operative ■works. Mr Millar's explanation is that, without the cognisance of the head office in Wellington, the agent of the Labour Department in Greymouth sent four men to work at the Blackball co-operative •works, ,, his explanation being that the men ho had sent to work were men who tad opposed the strike, and -were married men, and he did not look upon them in the same light as the others. It does not say very much, we think, for the organisation of the Department when a local agent can take upon himself the responsibility of giving Government work to men out on strike whom his superior officers had been vainly trying to induce to come to terms with their private employers. Our correspondent, who made very careful enquiries into tho case, informed us that as a matter of fact five of the strikers were taken on tho cooperative works, and twenty of them wouki have been given similar employment but for the protest which was raised. ■ The Minister has now very properly ordered that no man who came out from tho Blackball mine, <.-r who has been employed in or about tho mine, is to bo employed on Government) works. It would be simply mvnstrous if the Government, in addition to the extraordinary reluctance they have shown to enforce tho law which the strikers have broken, were £<:tuaily to aid and abet them in their defiance- of the Couit by giving them Government employmojit and paying them with the taxpayers' money. Tho calm assumption on the part of the labour agent at Greymouth that he was at liberty to discriminate between the strikers and give employment to such as he thought proper, completely ignoring the Minister and the permanent head of the Department, is one of the coolest things we have over heard of. Need>less to cay, bis explanation, does not afford the slightest justificatiAn for Ids conduct. Accepting as correct the statement that the men opposed the strike, the fact that they cam© out with the rest places them in the same boat as the others so far as the impropriety of their receiving Government employment is concerned. If they are married men, we are sorry for their wives and families, but the worst feature about a strike is that it is always the wives and famishes who sufFer the most. That is the strongest possible reason why tho Blackball men should have upheld the Arbitration Act, instead of defying it, but it does not affoni tho slightest justification for the Government aiding aaid abetting them in their breach of tho law. Mr Millar does not say whether the men have been discharged from the co-operativo works or not, but we presume this has been doao. Otherwise the Government must accept tho full responsibility of their having been taken on in the first instance.