The Dominion. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1908. OPINIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ARBITRATION.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 302, 15 September 1908, Page 6

The Dominion. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1908. OPINIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ARBITRATION.

• « In the 64 closely-printed foolscap pages of evidence taken by the Labour Bills Committee upon the Arbitration Act Amendment Bill there is much that is instructive and not a little that is amusing. remarkable feature of the evidence—the bulk of which was furnished by delegates from Labour organisations —is its revelation of the hopeless wrongheadedness of the Labour leaders, and their inability to realise that the acceptance of an Arbitration Court award involves the surrender of the right to strike. One witness, it must be admitted, agreed that workers who strike under an award should be punished, but he maintained nevertheless that men' should be able to obtain an award, and yet strike if they desired to do so. But the general attitude of Labour was expressed by Mr. Hickey when, asked whether he considered that men " have a right to strike when it suits them," replied, " Yes, when it suits them." It was this witness who furnished a remarkable summary of his fellow delegates' contentions respecting the rights of employers under the Act. "Do you not consider," he was asked, " that an employer has the right to dispense with the services of any worker who docs not'suit him?" "Most decidedly not," was his blunt reply. "Do you not consider. it desirable," he was asked again, " that men should be paid, in proportion to the work they perform V' " No," he said, " I do not." From these quotations the public can infer the general character of the witness's views, which, on practically all essential points, were the views expressed by the other representatives of the Labour bodies. We cannot believe that the average worker is so foolish as this, or so contemptuous of common fair play, but he must change his leaders if he docs not desire to bo identified with their views. The decisive argument against compulsory arbitration and its permanent constraints of industry was, strangely onough, furnished by Mr. Teorn, who prosided over the rocent Trades and

Labour Conference at Wellington. He strenuously opposed " coercion and repression," and declared that " any legislation which took away from us absolutely the right to withhold our labour from the market is not justified in morality at all." That is a sentiment with which, in its literal meaning, we cordially agree. But what Mr. Tiiorn will not see is that this immoral restriction' of a worker's natural liberty is a necessary and inevitable condition of compulsory arbitration and its subsequent permanent coercion of the employer. He fails to see that the very sound principle that he laid down is a condemnation, not of the anti-strike clauses of the Act, but of the Act itself, which cannot exist without those clauses. No unbiased person questions now that the withdrawal of the prohibition against strikes would necessitate the withdrawal of the whole Act. It will be noted that Mr. George Booth, some extracts from whose evidence before the committee was reprinted yesterday, maintains, like Mr. Thorn, that men should be allowed to strike. But he holds, of course, that the destruction of this right is a necessary condition of the Act. He questions whether there is any real necessity 'for all this anxiety to suppress strikes, which are not, in his view, "so terrible a bugbear as some people would have us believe." He is quite sure that the cost of the arbitration system has been a loss in "industrial efficiency " far greater than ever resulted from strikes. This is an aspect of the question that has been too little considered. The Arbitration Act has not only created endless friction and unfriendly relations between masters and men, but it has also weakened the moral fibre of the workers. It " embodies and expresses, or even implicitly sanctions . . . false and vicious industrial and social ideals . . . the theory that work is not a thing in which a man should engage cheerfully and manfully and into which ho should put the best of his intelligence and his energy, but that it is a curse—a hateful and degrading necessity—imposed upon man for his sins, a penalty which it is not only justifiable but creditable to a man to dodge." Without going the length of this opinion, it may yet be affirmed that the Act has not made for efficiency. It has not even made for the poace that might have offset some of the loss of efficiency. It is hardly " good business," as the phrase goes, to maintain for the suppression of the small industrial evil of strikes a law that causes a great loss of national efficiency and a great mass of injustice. That the necessity for antistrike clauses in the Arbitration Act was not realised for a good many years means no more than that that necessity, owing to the satisfaction of Labour with its continued successes, did not force itself upon public attention. A simple analogy suggests itself. Nothing looks so useless as the iron shoe carricd by a lorry going up a steep Wellington street. The necessity for it becomes apparent when the lorry begins to descend a steep grade. Most people realise now that the right to strike can only bo conceded by, repealing the compulsory provisions of our arbitration laws. It is significant that the Prime Minister is approaching this view. The Labour Conference delegates, who urged the abolition of the antistrike clauses at Monday's deputation, demanded the original Act of 1894, which omitted to carry .the,'iron shoe in the shape of a provision against strikes. " The Government," the' Prime Minister told them, " believed that if industries were to be worked under a recognised system of statute law, they must have amendments made that wore not in the Act of 1894. [He referred, of course, to the anti-strike provisions of the new Bill.] If they found on trial that the Act was not of use, but was a source of friction and trouble to everybody, then the only alternative would be to repeal it and have no such law. The more he thought of it, the more he was convinced of that." If it will not take its courage in both hands now, the Government will merely be postponing the inevitable day> of repeal.