IS IT WORTH WHILE?

Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 51, 28 August 1920, Page 4

IS IT WORTH WHILE?

From figures prepared by a reliable authority, we. gather that the eighty men who worked the Japanese phos'phatee at the rates agreed to by the employers, and confirmed by the' Disputes Committee, received each 33s 4d a day. Their -demand—the unjustified demand thft led to the stoppage of port operations—was for 6s 8d extra. Assuming that the boat takes five days to unload, the -demanded 6s 8d comes to-fa total of '£133 6s Bd. For this comparatively email sum the employees broke their agreement and thereby held up almost all the business of the port, at a great monetary loss to themselves and their employers, and also held up the electric and gaa services of .the city, at a further huge and unestimated loss to everybody. Was the £133 6s 8d worth it? Especially in view of the fact that the /men could have continued working the phosphates under protest, knowing that at 'any time, and all the time, the Disputes Committee was available to act as umpire. And now that there is a danger that all the coal miners in New Zealand may strike because of trouble at some smaller mines, will it be ifound that the amount in dispute bears somewhat same proportion to the total coal outiput, and the industrial interests dependent thereon, as the £133 6s 8d bears to the damage which it caused? Of course, the economic argument is. not morally conclusive. The men would not be Iblameable for fighting for threepence if they could show that a disputes committee or some independent, impartial, and publicly acoredifjed authority backed their case. But strikers do not proceed that way. They go on their own, rely on brute force, and in a generally vain struggle for the; threepence they waste thousands of pounds of their own and other people's money.