LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 228, 21 June 1920, Page 5

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

THE EMPLOYERS' FEDERATION'

Sir,—l have just read with disgust'the statement of the Advisory Board of the, New Zealand Employers' Federation, * through their secretary, Mr. William Pi-yer. What a lot of words, and to prove what?—that they .were justified in opposing the. proposal for a national'industrial conference. When tho long-antici-pated industrial crash comes, it will bo found that tho Now Zealand Employers' Federation has been just, as much to blame- for plunging the country into a state of chaos as tho most Tabid Red Fctl. or Bolshevik agitator. All this talk of the 6ins of "official" Labour en!y tends to aggravate the existing bitterness between Capital and Labour. Extremists are to be found in both camps, and paid agitators are just as mischievous on <ai« 6ido as the Other, as they only usurp the places of those who are actually engaged in the industries. The pose of tliCße men of the Employers' _ Federation as being the eminently practical men is n'J piffle, bb for'tho.past twenty years they have dono nothing but forge, and use, the weapons of industrial warfare. Mr. Pryor's statement should have been headed "camouflage," for that it vlmt it amounts to. A body of men vho can talk about "the comparative freedom from strikes and industrial trouble in New Zealand," in face of this country's experiences since the close cf the war, ought to step aside and let somebody handle industrial questions who knows something of the facts, seeing they do not seem to know anything but platitudes. There have been a few cases in which profit-sharing and other schemes have been entered into in_ single establishments, but compared with the vrhole industrial field it is but a drop in the ocean. To talk about the spade -work dono by employers during tho past five or six years as an evidenco of how_ tho industrial upheaval ißjto be_ met,-js > to hold out the hope that a national industrial conference, on tho lines suggested by the Welfare League, may be eg rc-ed* to by the employers some time about the date of the millennium. The refusal of the Employers' Federation to face the industrial problems, where the power of control' really lies—at n-xonferenco, representative of both employers and workers -is a tactical blunder. If the employers cannot hold up their, own end in a discussion at a national conference, then what kind of captains of industry are they? Are they frightened of the Reds that they make bo much of them,-or linvo they no confidence in their own ctso for industrial peace? To sum up, do they really know where are, or arc tliey simply blind£y groping _ and praying all tho time that some accident will happen along and settle the industrial problems for them? As a humble student of industriaE affairs, it seems lo me that the futility of the present Employers'' Federation is the greatest stumbling-block for the, evolving of scmo better system than the present chaotio scramble—l am, etc., MENbHEv uK.