The Press TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1959. Dumped Cargo

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28822, 17 February 1959, Page 12

The Press TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1959. Dumped Cargo

The consignment of rotten fish dumped in Cook Strait after it had been ruined by Wellington watersiders is a fit symbol of the ugly temper brewing in the militant unions. The ordinary unionist and the public generally should be disturbed at the threats of lost wages, inconvenience, and downright hardship that have become only too real in th«» last few weeks. So should the Government. Labour philosophy is partly to blame in not preparing wage-earners for the inevitable results of a decline in overseas earning power. The present Labour Government has an even more direct responsibility through the effects of its election policy and Budget. When Labour was elected the Minister of Finance (Mr Nordmeyer) argued that an increase in the family allowance would avoid a wage increase, which did not seem reasonable while other incomes were falling. This argument failed to impress some union leaders; and, when the Budget reduced the worker’s takehome pay and increased the price of his beer and tobacco, they became more insistent on demanding higher wages. But the Federation of Labour has been naturally cautious about taking a claim to the Court of Arbitration, where it would find itself trying to counter some of the points, such as relative incomes, on which it had relied in the past. This doubt about the strength of the case that might be stated to a judicial body accounts for the eager-

ness of dairy workers, watersiders, and freezing workers to demand, under threat of strikes, that employers concede in “con- “ ciliation ” what Judges might not award in the courts. Curiously enough the president of the Federation of Labour and president of the Seamen’s Union (Mr F. P. Walsh) has come out on the side of the strike party. It is a strange attitude for the apostle of stabilisation, and a stranger one for the Mr Walsh of 1951. After its capitulation to the dairy workers the Government may not feel inclined to accept the militants’ challenge. It could at least try to talk some sense into its so-called, supporters by calling the leaders to Wellington and pointing out that a repetition of 1946-49 irresiionsibility could harm nothing more than the Labour movement. The Government should say also that' there is a point beyond which even the most complaisant Ministers cannot be expected to go. Sooner or later that point must be reached, and with it a worse split, than Labour suffered in 1951. It is hard to believe that union leaders are so indifferent to the well-being of the rank and file that they would risk it unnecessarily merely to inflate their own positions. Loss of wages is bad enough for strikers; but worse is the sowtemper a strike spreads through the community. New Zealand is too small a country to split into artificial classes; too fortunate a country to play at misery.