HANDICAP TO AUSTRALIA

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 57, 5 September 1945, Page 7

HANDICAP TO AUSTRALIA

(Special P.A. Correspondent.) SYDNEY, September 4. The wave of industrial unrest in Australia is causing a serious setback to the smooth transition from wartime to peacetime conditions and is an embarrassment to the Federal Labour I Government. As the "Sydney Morning Herald" puts it, the coalminers have long since set themselves above the law. Now,. other unions accustomed to accept regulations of their conditions by the Courts are also showing a preference for direct action. The one-day strike of railway workers in Victoria last week was a case in point. In Brisbane, the tramway men have been on strike for a week over the roster system, and one of their officials has frankly expounded the doctrine that the strike weapon is to be preferred to arbitration when there is no guarantee that the Court will grant the union's claim. For the second time this year, the maintenance men at the Bunnerong power station are on strike and Sydney's electricity supply—recurrently threatened with rationing because the miners will not produce enough coal — is again in jeopardy. For the past fortnight, half a dozen or so mines have been idle every day in New South Wales. Already numbers of industries in this State and Victoria have had to close down because of lack of coal. CHALLENGE BY LABOUR. The perturbation of serious-minded Australians over this wave of strikes is reflected in newspaper editorials.; The "Sydney Morning Herald" says' that at a time when peace in industry is essential to the smooth transition from war conditions, the arbitration system—the established Australian method of adjusting disputes—is being widely challenged. "Nobody expects the arbitration system to be an infallible preventive of strikes," the paper adds, "but it is in danger of becoming discredited when powerful sections of key industries flout the authority of the Courts. The danger is greater when Labour Governments, in their anxiety to obtain a settlement, not only fail to uphold that authority, but actually take steps to impair it. The newspaper adds that the stoppages are serious in their implications for the Labour movement, industrial and political. The "Daily Telegraph," in agreeing with this view, says: "The greatest problem which the Prime Minister, Mr. J. B. Chifley, inherits from the late Prime Minister is the job of keeping the militants of the trade union movement in line. Mr. Chifley must realise that his Government will fail in its job and damage Atistralia gravely by its failure if it cannot maintain peace in industry over the next .few years, when we have to reorder our affairs internally while building_ ourselves back into the system of international trade. "The militants are as much his enemies as the reactionaries. Unless he destroys them, they will destroy him —and the Labour Party as well."