The Tramway Trouble.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16357, 31 October 1918, Page 6

The Tramway Trouble.

There was a further development in the tramway disputo yesterday in tho form of a proposal by the Union that a conference should be held under the presidency of the Conciliation Commissioner, Mr "W. H. Hagger. Tho Union asks that tho men who have been dismissed shall bo reinstated, and if this is done and a conference agreed to, the normal running of the cars "will be resumed pending the result of the conference. The Board has rejected this proposal, but it lias intimated that it will consider the holding of a conference -when the normal service is restored. "Wo trust that the Union will abandon tho "go-slow" policy at once, and leave the Board with the responsibility which it is prepared to assume. From the beginning the public have regarded as utterly unreasonable tho maintenance of tho "go-slow" policy, and have been wholly with the Board in its insistence upon pacific conditions as essential to the holding of a conference. Although they sympathise with the men's demand for higher pay, and feel that the Board might have been more prompt with its practical recognition of the propriety of increasing the men's -wages, the public nevertheless cannot lie persuaded that the control committed to the Board should be given up by the Board under the threat of a strike or under the pressure of tactics in the nature of a strike. The men have been "striking on the job," whatever their representative may eay about the observance of the rules, and the Board was bound by its duty to }>he public to resist such conduct at almost any cost. The men have nothing whatever to gain, and much to lose—for' public sympathy means a very great deal —by obstinacy in error. They may take it for granted—or so, at least, we hope—that the Board will not refuse a conference if the normal service is restored immediately. Nor need there, ■we should say, be much difficulty over the reinstatement of the men who have been dismissed. The Board had an unquestionable right to dismiss these men, and it cannot allow jts authority in this matter to be questioned by being made a matter for bargaining. But if the Union consents to abandon the. "go- " slow" policy and to propose a conference without conditions, tho Board's authority will have been completely maintained, and the public will approve of th© reinstatement of the dismissed employees. If tho Union should be so unwise as to persist in its present attitude, the Board will have no choice save to see the matter through, and it will assuredly in that case have the public behind it. I =====