The Press Monday, November 30, 1925. Preference to Unionists.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18552, 30 November 1925, Page 8

The Press Monday, November 30, 1925. Preference to Unionists.

Ifc is not surprising that one result of • the readiness of certain bodies of organised workers to break the law which aims at the prevention of illegal strikes has led to the suggestion that " preference to unionists" should be abolished. The " preference " clause has for so long becu a standard part of Arbitration Court Awards that to many people it may seem to be a natural, reasonable, and necessary rule of employment. Yet from the beginning it has been a bad rule, and the events of the past twenty years in the world of industry have not made it any better. What it amounts to is a prescription tliat no man shall earn his living at any trade in which there is a union of workers unless he joins the union. This most serious violation of the social and industrial and legal freedom of the individual worker cannot be justified except through its being necessary to some higher social interests for which individuals must make sacrifices of some kind. Now, what arc the interests which " prefer- " ence to unionists" is designed to serve? The interests, simply, of those who wish to use workingmen for the of certain political ends. If trade, unionism were concerned solely with the obtaining and maintaining of good conditions of employment, compulsory membership of a union would not be highly objectionable in practice, although still quite wrong in principle. But trade-unionism to-day is concerned with much more than the maintenance of good conditions of employment. Indeed, questions of wages and liours are minor considerations with organised Labour in this Dominion. .Labour no longer aims only at protecting the worker in his employment: it aims at bringing the whole social and political organisation of the country under its control. Preference to unionists has therefore come to signify, as Mr Victor Clark pointed out in his book, " The Labour Move- " ment in Australasia," " preference of " employment to members of a political "organisation. Under the secret bal- " lot," he adds, " no union can force a "man to vote the Labour ticket, but "it can coerce members by effective " moral duress to gwe financial support "to the Party and otherwise obey its "dictates."

This is what "preference to " unionists " has become: a decree of starvation, enforced by the national law, against any workman who will not contribute to the support of a Party which aims at overthrowing the existing social and economic structure of the nation. It is small wonder that people are beginning to murmur against it,, especially when they see that the most striking characteristic of present-day unionism is a cynical contempt for contracts and for statute law. But an alternative to the sweeping away of this unjustifiable "preference" is suggested by a contributor whose article appears in " The " Press " to-day. He points out that the extraordinary privilege of preference has been granted without any return service being yielded. His suggestion is that in return for this privilege a union confronted with an illegal strike should be obliged to cancel forthwith the membership of the strikers. If the union should fail to do its duty in such a case, it would be exposed to de-registration. This is a penalty, our contributor suggests,' which no union would lightly incur, since its consequence would entail such unwelcome results as the loss of office by the union officials, the possible loss of the union's accumulated funds, and last, but not least, the loss of preference to all its members. In this proposal nothing more is asked than that the unions should accept some responsibility in return for the extraordinary privilege granted to Nothing could be more just and reasonI able than this, and it could not be ' opposed by any union or union leader really desirous of an honest observance of the law.