ONE BIG UNION

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 13, 17 January 1922, Page 7

ONE BIG UNION

AUSTRALASIAN MOVEMENT

NEW ZEALAND APPROVES SCHEME.

The New Zealand Workers'. Union, the membership of which is approximately 22,000, has decided to adopt the One Big Union scheme which was formulated at a conference of representatives of the New Zealand Workers' Union held in Australia in the early ■part of last year. This means that the N.Z.W.U. has become part and parcel of the Australian organisation, the name of which ie now The Australasian Workers' Union, with a membership of about 700,000. Although it has affiliated with the A.W.U., the New Zealand Workers' Union will retain full antonomy over its own affairs.

Among the .organisations connected with the N.Z.W.U. are the shearers and shed hands, agricultural workers, construction workers, and the Public Works Department, sections of the amployees in the timber industry, flaxmill workers, lime and cement workers, the general labourers of the Northern Industrial District, and various workers in Otago. It is expected that there will be a big accretion to the membership this season. A conference of the Australasian Workers' Union is to be held at M'Donald House, Sydney, the headquarters of the A.W.U., on 27th January, when New Zealand will be represented by Messrs. O. Baldwin (president), of Chrietclrarch, and C. Grayndler (secretary), of Wellington. Thn objects of the One Big Union scheme, as defined at the conference held at Sydney in March of last year, is to bind together in one organisation all the wage • workers in every industry to abolish capitalism. "Capitalism," says the preamble, "can only be abolished by the workers uniting in one class-conscious, economic organisation to take and hold the means of production by revolutionary industrial and political action. 'Revolutionary action' means action to secure a complete change, namely, the abolition of capitalistic ownership of the means of production—whether privately or through the State —and the establishment in its place of social ownership by the whole community." No section, of the A.W.U. may take any. action involving any portion of the Union without having first consulted the supreme governing body, the Annual Convention, and the highest authority is th 6 plebiscite vote of the members.

The O.B^U. scheme is not to.be confused with that of the Alliance "f Labour, the largest Labour organisation in the Dominion, the workers, belonging to which are!grouped into departments according to the nature of the industry in which they are employed. Som<-. time ago proposals were discussed for the amalgamation of the Alliance of Labour and the N.Z.W.U., but nothing definite has been done up to tlie present.