PINPRICKING AND THREATS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 73, 27 March 1931, Page 8

PINPRICKING AND THREATS

The Wellington City Branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners this week adopted a resolution, which stated:— The practice of engaging carpenters and joiners through relief committees and getting them to work at their trades for relief rates must be stopped, otherwise the union will consider tho advisability of urging its members not to pay the unemployment levy in future. No exception can he taken to the general principle of the first part of the resolution, but the threat to incite members to defy the law by refusing to pay the unemployment tax is most reprehensible. It is unworthy of a trade union which is established under the law, and which would not hesitate to invoke the law in support of its privileges. There have been several such threats by various organisations lately, and those making them fail utterly to see where their defiance must lead. What would they say if a wealthy man were to threaten similarly: "If the Arbitration Court does this or that I will not pay my income tax"? They would certainly be sending resolutions in sheaves to the Government demanding the immediate prosecution of the defiant taxpayer. Maintenance of award conditions and trade privileges is open to no objection, but there is every objection to any union attempting to take the law into its own hands and break one law so as to enforce the observance of another. Yet the maintenance of trade union privileges must be reasonable. The further particulars appended to the carpenters' resolution reveal a disposition to hinder the task of relieving unemployment by rigid insistence upon minor points. It is quite right to object to the engagement of tradesmen to work at their trades under pretence that they are lo do gardening; but we cannot agree that there is reason to protest against relief workers doing fencing or concrete boxing. Such work can be done by any average worker, and it is done regularly by farmers, propertyowners, and jobbing workmen. It is making an absurdity of award re : gulalions lo claim that when these operations form part of a relief works scheme no relief worker shall do ihem, and that tradesmen shrill be engaged under award conditions. The only result of insistence upon such conditions at the present time must be that work will stop, and thai the general public will say of the union'responsible: "It is more concerned to preserve every little privilege it can claim than to help in giving relief to the workless."