DISRUPTION OF INDUSTRY

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25181, 12 May 1947, Page 6

DISRUPTION OF INDUSTRY

“CRISIS EXISTS IN PEOPLE’S MINDS” CO-OPERATION ADVOCATED BY MINISTER (P.A.) WELLINGTON, May 10. “There is said to be an industrial • crisis in New Zealand to-day; that may be, but I would like to point out that 99 per cent, of any crisis exists in the minds of the people themselves, and it takes a lot more than newspaper headlines and editorials to constitute a real crisis,” said the Minister of Rehabilitation (Mr C. F. Skinner) m an address to the New Zealand Federation of Co-operatives to-day. He said he thought what was being experienced to-day was just another phase of the old, unnecessary, wasteful struggle between labour and capital. "For too long now, employers and employees, farmers and industrial workers, professional men and wageearners have thought and spoken and acted as separate self-interested sections, each aloof from the others, each on the defensive against the others, and each seeking its own advantage above all other interests,” said the Minister. “It is a suicidal struggle, and has to stop—in the national field, as in the international.” Disrupters On All Sides The so-called crisis to-day was nothing new, and the people who were causing it had always been In the community. “I make it clear,” said Mr Skinner, “that I refer to disrupters on all sides—for no faction has a monopoly of disruptive forces —and we must take care not to run from one enemy into the arms of another. There are those who would seize the present opportunity to foment something like a panic for their own purposes, and I am afraid that there are people like that on both sides of the fence. We must be constantly on our guard, not only against disruption in our community from any one side, but also against the exploitation by one side or the other of what may hastily be called disruption.”

New Zealand did not want any heresy hunts, whether of so-called Fascists or Communists. He did not like either, and would do all he could to stop them securing any power, but he did not believe in helping them qr any other apostle of violence or disruption to achieve prominence through martyrdom. “Militant” Unions

“I do not pretend that all is well in our country, or that there is no room for improvement socially or industrially,” continued Mr Skinner. "There is a lot to be done, and we have only just started, but let us not be panicked either by so-called ‘militant’ unions, or by those who hate and fear unionism. Let us not, in our natural sympathy for a stricken and foresaken Wanganella, be trapped into raising Wanganellas above human values and making them of greater importance than workers’ conditions and needs which have been fought for down the years. “But, on the other hand, let us not, as workers, seek a fleeting and purely sectional profit from the misfortunes of our Wanganellas. instead of building our social structure on a sure and permanent foundation.” He saw no firmer or finer foundation on which to build than the co-opera-tive principle. He said he wanted to see the co-operative principle extended, not only into shops, but also into factories and public utilities generally. ,