‘Class Struggle Wrong Policy’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31048, 2 May 1966, Page 3

‘Class Struggle Wrong Policy’

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 1. It was a pity some union leaders appeared to encourage a policy of class struggle—workers against the boss, Mr K. A. Belford, a well-known figure in industrial affairs, said in Wellington yesterday. “In many industries in New Zealand—the shipping industry, for instance—they’re all workers, from the top down,” he said. “Indeed, the higher up a man gets, the harder he works for the betterment of the industry.”

Mr Belford has retired after being industrial superintendent of the Union Steam Ship Company for 18 years. He said the boss was as dependent on the worker as the worker was on the boss. The idea bf worker against the boss was age-old, and too many men continued to sow it in the minds of the young —the idea that they should do as little work as possible for as much as they could get. The truth was that workers’ prosperity depended on an industry’s prosperity—and the boss was incidental. “I don’t know one boss who today considers himself a master suppressing the servants and not giving them a fair go.”

Union leadership today was more responsible than it used to be—waterfront work, for instance, was in better shape than it had been for 15 years—but there was still room for a great deal of improvement, said Mr Belford. Mr Belford joined the Union Steam Ship Company 50 years ago, in Newcastle, N.S.W., and came to Wellington in 1936 to be assistant industrial superintendent. In 1949 he became industrial superintendent. He was a member of the Waterfront Commission and then the Waterfront Industrial Tribunal, just after the Second World War, and latterly has been on the Industrial Advisory Committee, the National Port Safety

I Council and the Waterside National Amenities Committee. Mr Belford has regularly taken part in negotiating awards with more than 40 unions, with the maritime unions and waterfront unions the most important in his sphere. He believes firmly in the New Zealand system of conciliation and arbitration to settle industrial disputes. “It will be a sorry day for the country if anything is done to overturn the system,” he said. It was right that a court should be the last resort, and that the parties should agree to accept the decision of the court as a third party.