TRADE UNIONISM

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 290, 3 September 1931, Page 5

TRADE UNIONISM

What it Should Be MR. W. T. STRAND’S VIEWS His attitude toward trade unionism was expressed by Mr. W. T. Strand, mayor of Lower Hutt, in the course of an address at a concert arranged by the Wellington General Labourers’ Union in the Lyceum Theatre, Lower Hutt, last night He also gave some details connected with his early life. “I understand,” Mr. Strand said, “this meeting is called to further the movement of trade unionism, in the Hutt Valley. When the matter was mentioned to me I said I was in fr ■■ of trade unionism and always had been, provided it was helpful to employees and employers alike. “To make trade unionism a success there has got to be hearty co-operation. Without that it cannot be successful. While a union tries, as the old guilds tried, to make better men and better conditions, so long are they helpful and beneficial. In my opinion, when a union becomes militant and against goodwill, it becomes a menace, not only to the employers, but to the men themselves. What we want to see in the world to-day is a better spirit than has existed in the past or exists to-day. “If there is any man who ought to be bitter against employers it is myself. My father and mother were driven from England, not being able to get work in the village in which they were living because my father, when a young man, refused to allow my mother to pick stones and work in the hopfields of Kent when she was unable to do so. My father ought to have been bitter, but, thank God, he was not. “I was born in New Zealand. My father landed with his wife, four children, and he had £2 in his pockets. In the first week he walked every day from Wellington to Mason’s Gardens until he got two rooms in Lower Hutt. There, not long afterwards, I was born. “He was well known to people here, and I can picture him still when he said to us boys, “Don’t carry things too far. There is a middle course. lam thankful I was driven from England. It has been beneficial to me.’ 1 feel,” added Mr. Strand, “my father was right. “Just as you think of each others’ welfare, jusf as employers and employees mesh together, trade unionism should be encouraged. I will do all I can to encourage it. But when it becomes militant, and the militancy dominates, there is a clear-cut issue so far as my help is concerned. While capitalists, while employers, try to extract something for nothing, it js wrong. While men’ try to get something for nothing, it is just as wrong. What is wanted to right this world is sensible hard work. There are many, many causes, and many, many cures. for the world’s ills, but no one cause or cure. But I believe goodwill between employers and employees would do more than anything else to right the world.”