The Dominion. TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 1908. STRIKES AND THE FUTURE

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 225, 16 June 1908, Page 6

The Dominion. TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 1908. STRIKES AND THE FUTURE

Fob over a year the public has been constantly hearing and reading of strikes, and it is a curious testimony to'the adaptability of the public mind to new conditions that strikes have almost lost their power to surprise. Yet it is only two years since a rumour that a strike had taken place would have been greeted by an excited public with cries of incredulity. To-day the strike has come to be regarded as a settled feature of New Zealand industry, and people are nowadays surprised, riot at the reappearance of an industrial disease that we were constantly told had been stamped out, but at the fact that there was once a time when men did not go on strike. Accustomed as the public has become to the new order of things, however, most people will bo surprised at the vigour of the strike movement as disclosed in the record of such disturbances which we print to-day. That record may be allowed to speak for itself of the drift of industry in New Zealand, and of the failure' of the Arbitration Act to achieve the; ends which -it sought to promote. The friends of the Government, who'in'this matter are not the friends either of industrial health or of common justice, are reluctant to admit that the Act has failed, but all impartial, pepple are convinced that no amount of amending legislation that is based on permanent compulsion will- render strikes impossible.

It will bo obserycd from tho list of strikes that havo occurred during tho past eighteen months that no serious attempt has been made by the Government to discourage tho growing readiness of Labour to resort to strike methods, not as a last re-sort, but as tho shortest and easiest way of bringing to a head any dispute that may be on ■ hand. Since the infliction of fines upon the Canterbury slaughtermen, the Government has devoted all its enorgios to evading its responsibilities, and it kAo at last) sue cesdcd in persuading tho tradea-unloaiats

that they will not be " persecuted " or inconvenienced if they choose to go on strike. An instructive feature of the past eighteen months' history has been l.lie growth of a cynical boldness in trades-union circles. When the strike fever began, the outbreaks had at least this excuse, that they were really in the nature of last resorts. Gradually, however, they have become the established mothod of asserting opinions and harrying employers. In the Pareora " smoke " strike, and in the Blackwater strike, the men practically used their new-found freedom simply to browbeat and punish their masters. By its successive surrenders to Labour lawlessness, the Government has let the forces of disorder get. beyond its control, and the ground that has been lost may never be recovered. If the failure of the Act had proceeded simply from the inability of the Government to contend against the operation of the economic forccs legislated against, there would be little doubt as to the amending legislation necessary, and little disagreement upon its principles. But the Government has complicated the matter, and has rendered sound amendment difficult, by bringing about the crisis through truckling to a political, faction strong enough to be far more important than justice to a Ministry desirous above all things of• remaining in office.

At present the mechanism of industrial arbitration, reduced to its simplest terms, consists of a machine for issuing certain mandates, and another machine for enforcing a permanent obedience on the subjects of them. Whatever amendment may be made in the manner of issuing these mandates, or in the nature of the compulsion, the mechanism will remain essentially the same. Had last year's Bill been in force, for example, there would have been nothing in it to alter the course of the Blackball strike. The mere nature of the wage-fixing tribunals, and the mere nature of the penal compulsion to obedience, are of no moment. Still less are the amendments vaguely foreshadowed by Ministers of value when Ministers will be as likely as ever to tamper with the law, and to justify their action by calling it' " persecution" to punish offenders. "Itis no use," as the Chairman of the Canterbury Employers' Association declared the other day, "jt is no uso sailing under false colours. If voluntary arbitration is now the practice, why not admit the fact, and remodel ths Act so as to nut it on a better working basis, and remove the injustice under which employers labour." As the Act is administered, it no.t only fails to secure that awards shall be respected, or that strikers shall be punished, but it commits the grave injustice of keeping the employer bound by the contract that his employee may defy at pleasure. Nor does the injustice to the employer rest there, for he is constantly threatened with injury to his business, which can bear the high wages and other weights imposed upon it by the Court's awards only so long as it is safe from disturbance. All over the country trades unions demand the retention of the 'Act in its present shape, and if they do not demand a continuance of its present administration, that is only because such a demand must be taken for granted. The Government ought to make this confession of Labour's appreciation of the Act's benefits the starting point of its amendments. Let 'the price of striking be, not fine or imprisonment, but the loss of all rights under the award the striker. This, in effect, is Me.- W. Fraser's suggestion, and its merits are its harmony with the principles of equity, and its innocence of any ambition to alter the laws of economics or of human nature. Wo have seen that complications and disorders have sprung .in abundance from that ambition in the past. Will the Government have the courage to admit its errors, and the errors of its predecessors? There is no longer any reason why the country should be too proud, or too fearful of a loss of prestige, to admit that the experiment of 1894 has failed.