The Dominion SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1924. RAILWAY STRIKERS AND THE PUBLIC

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 181, 26 April 1924, Page 4

The Dominion SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1924. RAILWAY STRIKERS AND THE PUBLIC

Having failed to coerce the Government by holding up railway traffic during the Easter holidays, the railwaymen are now talking of spreading their strike. Indeed, as long ago as last Wednesday evening, the president of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (Mb. Connelly) spoke of calling out the Wellington tramwaymen and other workers.

If the railwaymen could not win out “on their own,” he said, “they had the transport workers behind them. There was no desire to call these men out, but if the railwaymen needed it, it would be done.”

Other workers, perhaps, might not be induced as readily as Mr. Connelly supposes to copy the ill-advised tactics of the railwaymen. That apart, however, the feature which commands attention in the utterance of the A.S.R.S. president is the unconcern with which he is prepared to inflict hardships and suffering on the public. It may easily be perceived that in the eyes of Mr. Connelly and those who share his outlook, the railwaymen are the only people it is at all necessary to consider. Yet the New Zealand community contains a very large nujnber of people most of whom are no better off than the average railwayman—many of them are not as well off. On these people the strike imposes inconvenience, expense, and serious hardship. Ceasing work themselves, the railwaymen are depriving many others who have nothing to do with their dispute of the right to earn a living. The hardships inflicted thus and in other ways on the general community will, of course, be accentuated and extended if the railwaymen are able to induce other bodies of workers to engage in “sympathy strikes.” Ostensibly the railwaymen are engaged in a contest with the Government, but it is against the long-suffering public that their weapons are really turned. It is to the public that such threats as Mr. Connelly uttered at Petone on Wednesday night are in reality addressed. The railwaymen have a good deal to say about their own rights, but they have made it particularly clear also that they are prepared to trample the rights of the public underfoot. It is in keeping with the attitude thus betokened that the public evidently are expected to ? sit down quietly under such threats as Mr. Connelly used on Wednesday night—threats that the hardships the strike is already inflicting on the community will be intensified unless the railwaymen meantime gain their ends. If the railwaymen were perfectly frank, they would admit that they are attempting to extort concessions by attacking the community • —in other' words, that they are trading for their own selfish ends on the amount of hardship and discomfort they are able to inflict on other sections of the population. Attempts to show that the railwaymen were relatively worse off , than other workers appear to have broken down. Some efforts are now i— ™ a j e to camouflage the real position by suggesting that the railwaymen are giving a lead to other workers in obtaining better wages all round. This pretence is so hollow that it hardly needs exposure. After the- experience of the war and post-war years, most people know that a general increase in money wages to all classes of workers would bo to these workers not a gain but a loss. An all-round increase in money wages would send up working costs and prices in a corresponding, or more than corresponding, degree, and nearly everyone would be worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. Not only would increased prices in these circumstances offset any increase in money wages, but the higher prices would have the effect of narrowing the demand for goods and services. This would mean unemployment on a more or less serious scale. In existing circumstances in this country, anything in the nature of a wage-boosting campaign undoubtedly would be brought to a standstill before it had gone far by trade and industrial dislocation and unemployment. On the simple facts of the case suggestions that the railwaymen are leading other workers in a movement for their common benefit cannot be taken seriously. One of the most remarkable recent developments of the strike situation is the request of a deputation appointed by a public meeting at Petone that the Government should open negotiations with the railwaymen. No one can be unaware that the railwaymen, entirely on their own initiative, abruptly broke off negotiations with the Government. Presumably it is open to them to re-open negotiations whenever they please. The railwaymen have not at any stage been refused the right to approach the Government. What they were refused, and must expect still to be refused, was the right to dictate a settlement purelv in accordance with their own ideas, and with as little regard for the rights of the public as they are manifesting in their tactics of direct, action.