STRIKE UNIONS LOSE AWARD

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 15, 19 January 1914, Page 6

STRIKE UNIONS LOSE AWARD

Two registered industrial unions in Canterbury which sowed cheerfully at strike time have just been reaping a somewhat sorrowful harvest. In common with a number of other Arbitration Act unionists, they struck work in breach of the spirit and the letter of the law whose protection they claim ; and now they are proba.bly surprised to find that the Arbitration Court has refused to give them new awards. Public opinion, however, will applaud the attitude of the Court and admire its firmness. Something is needed to remind registered unionists that the Arbitration Act represents a strictly reciprocal bargain, and that strikers who repudiate its obligations cannot expect to enjoy its privileges. One of the obligations is to provide continuity of working, and one of the privileges is to present grievances to the Court and have them re : dressed by means of awards. Some big unions, whose numerical strength gives them a militant spirit, openly repudiated this bargain, and substituted the strike weapon for the Court as a means of redress. Though they followed false gods, these organisations, in going outside the Act, took up, at any rate, ft defined position. Though misled, they were not misleading, and people knew exactly where they were. But the same cannot be said of some of those numerically weaker unions which, while owing everything to the Arbitration Act and nothing to their own strength, yet broke the Act in the hour of trouble to pursue some intangible thing labelled "sympathy." These are the people who like to be on both sides of the fence; to eat their cake and to have it too. It is good to note that Nemesis, in the comparatively mild form of a refusal of award, ha* overtaken a section of them; and it is to be hoped that every opportunity will be taken to impress on striking unions tho reciprocal nature of their contract, its burdens and its advantages. Otherwise, the recrudescence of Arbitration Act unionism will be meaningless. The policy summed up in Mr. Hickey's notorious phrase concerning agreements has got to be fought whether outside the Act or inside it.