NEW UNION

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 121, 28 November 1928, Page 11

NEW UNION

AUSTRALIAN SEAMEN MEETING WITH SUCCESS (From "The Post's' Representative.) SYDNEY, 21st November. The movement to form a new Seamen's Union in Australia appears to be meeting with a fair measure of success, despite the terrorist tactics employed by the leaders of tho old union, which has been tho eeutro of so much strife during the last few years. The proposal to establish tho new body, which is to bo run on moderate lines, was made by Mr. Tom Walsh, and it is of interest to note that whereas the existing union is not registered under tho Arbitration Act, the' Court has been tsked to register tho new organisation. This registraiou will bo bitterly opposed, but as the existing union has no legal standing before tho Court, tho opposition is considerably handicapped. All along the Sydney branch of tho union has been the centre of the reactionary forces, and it is therefore surprising that so many of the members of that branch should havo given in their names as prospective members of the new union. For some time Mr. Jacob Johnson has held complete sway in Sydney, but now that ho is in prison _for six months the influence of the forces which ho has been directing is not so powerful. Nevertheless, a meeting of tho Sydney branch has decided that every member who has promised to join the now union must withdraw his name before the end of the month, otherwise he will be .regarded as a "blackleg," and will be refused tho right to work. As this threat foreshadows something in the nature of a strike, it i 3 not regarded seriously, for it is recognised that the Australian seamen, handicapped by the provisions of the Transport Workers' Act, and the force of public opinion, havo no chance of winning a strike. Mr. Walsh, who is in tho anomalous position of being the legal secretary of the existing union by virtue of a ruling of tho Court, regards tho threat as "so much piffle." "Three years ago tho union tried to hold up the whole of the shipping because something or other did not please them," he said, "but within three weeks shipping employers in this Stato had every one of their vessels manned without recourse to the Seamen's Union for any help. 'The value of the latest threats can bo gauged when it is understood that half-a-dozen inter-State steamers are running along the coast of Australia today with free labour on board.. Thoso people who are using threats against their fellow-members can do nothing to prevent those ships being manned and worked by non-union labour." Mr. Walsh pointed out that, for nearly threo years tho Johnson faction within the Seamen's Union had been carrying on a campaign against his sup- . porters and himself, because they advocated tho registration of the union under the Federal Arbitration law. In that campaign they spent every available penny of tho union's funds in their attempts to prevent that registration. Their great argument had been that seamen could do better outside the Courts. During the last throe years the seamen havo repeatedly carried resolutions in favour of registration, but these have been ignored by tho officials, because, according to Mr. AValsh, the maintenance of tho filibustering tactics could not exist in a registered organisation.