The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1936. DISAFFECTED TRADE UNIONS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 301, 16 September 1936, Page 8

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1936. DISAFFECTED TRADE UNIONS

Disaffection among trade unions, leading to stop-work meetings and hold-ups in industry, is becoming too frequent. It is being brought home to the Government that even by the device of most liberal concessions to the workers by legislation it is impossible to satisfy all of them.. Those of them who have not been satisfied are. now making trouble, Among the results to date are stoppages in the northern coalmines, dislocations of shipping at Auckland, and trouble at the Calliope Dock at that port. The workers concerned are apparently relying on the principle of action which determined their policy in the past—that if they make trouble enough they may ..get what they want. That is not a constitutional way of doing things. The Prime Minister, now that he is called upon to consider the situation from the angle of governmental responsibility, agrees that it is unconstitutional, but qualifies his agreement by reservations. Replying to a question in the House of Representatives yesterday, he said that if, after making “due allowance for, the exceptional circumstafftes” which prevail during, the present period of readjustment, it appears that still further legislation is necessary “to encourage settlements by constitutional means,” consideration will be given to the steps necessary to achieve these. To what extent and how long does the Government expect it will have to make “due allowance” for these “exceptional circumstances”? Is it part of this policy of making allowances that Cabinet Ministers lately have had to make emergency journeys here and there to intervene, in disputes which ought to have been settled by cohstitutional means without inconvenient and vexatious interruptions to essential industries? In this connection Mr. Fraser has felt constrained to make an appeal to the workers at Auckland to stand by the Government and show a spirit of co-operation instead of embarrassing it by making trouble in industry. “I invite the transport workers to remember this,” he said: “Strikes and aggressive action on the waterfront are not against the shipowners, but against the Labour Government. If it misses the London market it will not be able to go on with its humanitarian legislation. , . . The duty of a trade unionist, if he has any sense at all, is to see that industry is kept going to enable the Labour Government to carry out its programme for abolishing poverty for ever.” Why should there be this special dispensation for a Labour Government any more than for one of a different colour? No matter what Government may be in power, a strike in defiance of laws made and provided is a challenge to authority, a challenge to the State, and a disservice to the community. Mr. Fraser told his hehrers that if the Government could not enforce the law with their support, it would have to abdicate, “unless it uses its power against the working people who elected it”—an impossible position, he added. “But what is the alternative? To walk out and let our opponents in.” The implications of such a situation as Mr. Fraser depicts boil down to this: that the Government if seriously challenged will either have to uphold the law or resign. Alternatively, through its policy of making allowances, it may be forced into the position of being blackmailed into making concessions by militant unions conscious of their political power. But this method of buying-off trouble cannot be continued indefinitely. The Government will be all the more respected by the public, and by the greater proportion of the trade unionists, if it makes plain to all concerned that it will stand no nonsense.