PEACE IN INDUSTRY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 39, 15 February 1941, Page 9

PEACE IN INDUSTRY

HOPEFUL SIGNS

LABOUR |N AUSTRALIA

(By Trans-Tasman Air Mall, from "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, February 2

Australia appears to be approaching industrial peace after months of strikes and strife, and bitterness between employers : and employees, the Government and the unions. Such a peace would lift the war effort to a maximum capacity.

It is true the employees of the metal trades are still banning overtime as a protest against taxation on overtime pay, but they are not receiving ' the expected support of other unions. The Commonwealth Council of the Amal-

gamated Engineering Union, which is the governing body of the organisation throughout Australia, decided not to impose the ban. The chairman', Mr. J. Cranwell, said that the union took a serious view of the increased taxation imposed on the workers, but would not place an embargo on •overtime because it was unable to supply sufficient labour for the three shifts that would have to be worked in place of overtime.

Other Labour organisations are also showing a more temperate attitude towards the Budget. The Newcastle Trades Hall Council abandoned a plan for a one-day stoppage, and southern miners postponed theirs. Several minor disputes have been settled at round-table conferences between employers' and employees' representatives.

One of the most hopeful signs is the attitude of moderate Labour, which earnestly desires industrial peace. The Official Labour Party and the NonCommunist Labour Party are on the eve of unity. The respective leaders.Messrs. Curtin and Beasley, are working harmoniously on the Advisory War Council, and the parties are being drawn closer together by the indiscriminate attacks on them by the third Labour faction—the Australian Labour Party, New South Wales, formed by Messrs. J. R. Hughes and W. Evans, who were among the principal executives of the Official Labour Party in New South Wales until removed from office for disruptive tactics shortly before the last Federal elections.

• A factor m the move to industrial peace is the conciliatory attitude of the Government towards the' demands of moderate Labour, thus strengthening the latter's hand industrially at the expense of the militants, by promising a review of the stringent new powers invested in the Government under ■Regulation 42a, and by speeding up the Arbitration Court machinery to deal more promptly with industrial disputes.