Evening Post. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1928. ANOTHER INDUSTRIAL CRISIS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 55, 13 September 1928, Page 10

Evening Post. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1928. ANOTHER INDUSTRIAL CRISIS

"A Land without Strikes" was the cheerful title given to this country some thirty years ago, when a spell of industrial harmony, principally due to high prices and rising wages, was attributed to the power of our Arbitration Court and Conciliation Boards. Even those distant observers who did not know that Sydney and Wellington are further apart than Dover and Calais till they learnt that the Southern Cross look twelve hours to cover the distance at the rate of 100 miles an hour, can hardly have been rash enough to confer such a title upon Australia. Strikes and rumours of strikes have been almost as conspicuous among the characteristic products of the country as cricketers and airmen, and in recent years the tripper who is prepared to generalise about the weather and everything else on the slender basis of his personal experience would rarely have had the chance of calling it a land of industrial peace unless his slay was limited to a very few weeks. The latest word from Australia is fortunately not of an actual strike, yet it is something more serious than the mere rumour of a strike. All vessels at the Brisbane, Adelaide, and Tasmanian wharves wore idle yesterday, we were told on Tuesday. No labour offered at the afternoon pickups. About thirty vessels are affected, including overseas liners. ... A prolonged struggle at the present moment would be disastrous owing to the desire of shippers to get their wool away. Four million pounds' worth of wool is awaiting shipment. ... If the trouble extends a general hold-up of all shipping is anticipated. Thus within three months after the settlement of the disastrous strike precipitated by the Marine Cooks' Union, another upheaval is threatened which may spread as far. It is characteristic of a topsyturvydom which is not peculiar to Australia lhat the present trouble has arisen from the workers' resistance to the operation of machinery which was instituted formerly for their protection. The Waterside Workers' Federation objects to the award of the Arbitration Court, and therefore proposes to disobey it. Though 95 per cent, of the Sydney walersiders are said to be satisfied with the award, there is a good deal of satisfaction elsewhere, and the official attitude of the Federation, Avhich speaks for all the Waterside Unions of the Commonwealth, appears to be represented by the following statement in a Sydney message yesterday:— The waterside ■workers not only object to Judge Booby's provision for a second pick-up in the afternoons, but they contend that the now award imposes heavy penalties for minor broaches and deprives their executive of considerable power. What the merits of these objections may be we are unable to say, nor are we concerned to guess. The immediate question is not whether the watersiders have a legitimate grievance or not, but whether they are expressing it in a legitimate way. Logically and morally, they are in the same position as any private litigant who has had judgment pronounced against him by any ordinary Court, or has been given a less favourable judgment than he expected. The voice of the Court is the voice of the law, and until the decision is reversed or amended by some higher judicial authority or by the Legislature, the man who defies it is defying the law. The fact that in the present case the litigants who object to the award are numbered by thousands may give them a better chance of success, but it does not make their action any more justifiable or any less dangerous to the democracy in whose name they are apt to speak. The shipowners are therefore quite right in taking their stand upon the law and refusing to consent either to the wholesale destruction of the award, or to bargaining about this 'provision or that. We answer, they say, by taking a definite and final stand by the award, refusing to barter law and order for peace and persistent chaos. .. . The day of continual enforced concession and piecemeal compromise is ended. We stand as a united body for arbitration as against anarchy, whether that anarchy bo the repudiation of the whole award or its tearing up clause by clause. As the custodian of the law the Government is, of course, particularly concerned to avert the threatened breach of the law and the disastrous consequences which would be entailed upon the whole country by the hold-up of all its shipping. In the maritime strike of a few months ago Mr. Bruce was slow to move, but on this occasion he has been very prompt. In his speech in [he Federal House of Representatives reported yesterday he committed the Government to take immediate and firm action for the enforcement of ihe award. Parliament, he said, recently passed a measure designed to ensure obedience to awards, and the wharf workers' present action constitutes n direct defiance of the Court. ... Ho hat! communicated with the Premiers of all the Ktat.cs, asking them to afford protection for free labour, and also to take such other stops as might bo deemed necessary to keep ships running. With these

measures tlio Commonwealth Government would afford the fullest co-opera-tion. Mr. Bruce has also, as we learn today, informed the Waterside Workers' Federation that the Government must uphold the law and enforce it. I am asking the steamship owners, he says, to take fiction under the award to cany on the transport service, and I ask your federation, in tlio interests of the people of Australia, to do likewise. The promptitude of the Prime Minister's appeal to both parties and to the State Premier is doubtless inspired by the experience of the previous strike, which was allowed to dawdle on in a most demoralising and damaging fashion. In Melbourne, where hostility to the award appears to be strongest and thousands of workers were expected to be idle yesterday, the shipowners have already cancelled all inter-State passenger bookings, and announced that if the dispute has not been settled by Monday they .will call for free labour. On Monday, therefore, the trouble should be brought to a head. It seems improbable that the shipowners of Melbourne will be allowed to fight the battle alone, or lhat the walersiders would decline to extend it even if the shipowners did not. But, whether in Melbourne alone or all along the line, it is the call for free labour that will be the real call to arms. There can, of course, be no such thing as the specific enforcement of an award. In so far as the watersiders or their unions have broken the award they can be punished, but the law cannot compel a man to work except in prison, and there-' fore is not so foolish as to make the attempt. ■ But the refusal of the Melbourne watersiders to work will do nobody any serious harm if they cannot prevent others from taking their places, and to prevent this prevention will become the duty of the State. The struggle may be long or short, but there can be no advantage in temporising. The sooner it is begun, the sooner will it be finished.