ECHO OF JOCKEY'S STRIKE

Evening Star, Issue 17719, 21 July 1921, Page 7

ECHO OF JOCKEY'S STRIKE

SIR 6. CLIFFORD & MOKOIA'S FIREMEN. ARBITRATION COURT JUDGMENT. MAGISTRATE’S DECISION UPHELD. _ The Arbitration Court to-day delivered judgment in what twelve months ago was best known as the Mokcia case, which arose out of the refusal of the firemen of that vessel to make the trip from Lyttelton to Wellington whilst Bir George ' Clifford (president of the Racing Conference) remained on board. The magistrate at Auckland (Mr H. C. Cuttcn) convicted the firemen of being parties to a strike, and inflicted a penalty of ££>. The defendants appealed against this decision. Tho Arbitration Court has now upheld tho decision of tho magistrate, and accordingly the appeal is dismissed. Thu judgment of the court reads as fellows;— “ This is an appeal on point of law from a determination of the Magistrate’s Court at Auckland, under which judgment was given against tho appellant for the recovery of a penalty of £5. The facts aro_ sot out in tho judgment of tho magistrate and the case on appeal. Tho appellant contends that in law no discontinuance of employment or breach of contract of service occurred. Tho magistrate has found as a fact that 1 tho S to 12 watch disobeyed an order received at some tirno to bo on watch, ready to work at 8 o’clock, and tho master’s evidence discloses that this was by arrangement among tho men.’ In Bowes v. Press it was held that coal miners who refused to go down in a ‘ cage ’ at tho same time as non-unionists _ had committed such a breach of their contract of service as to entitle tho plaintiff to substantial damages. In that case a formal notice of the miners’ intentions had been given to the mineowners, and the court held that they had broken their contract of service by their endeavor to enforce a, condition that did not appear in their contract of service, and that they had no right to claim. In the present case tho disobedience of an order by the 8 to 12 p.m. watch arose out of an improper and unjustifiable demand that Sir George Clifford should not be carried as a passenger, and we. cannot see any distinction in law' between the case cited and tho ease now before us. Tho magistrate lias found that tho breach in the present case was duo to concerted action for oiio of the purposes sot out in section 3 of tho Amendment Act of 1908, and his finding brings the broach within tho definition of a strike,

“ Tiic present appeal is in the nature of a test case, inasmuch as the magistrate delivered a written decision covering all the cases, but gave linalejudgment in respect of the present appellant (W. Tighe) only, and reserved_ the matter of penalty in. the case of the remaining twenty-two defendants. The court was asked by both parties to consider the magistrate’s judgment in so far as it affected the other defendants, most of whom were members of watches other than the 8 to 12 p..m. watch. The question as to whether a breach of contract amounting to a strike had been committed by those defendants is to be decided by reference to the facts as found in the Magistrate’s Court. It is not necessary that all the watches should in turn disobey specific orders. “Tho action of tbo ■men as a body in refusing to take the ship to sea so long us Sir George Clifford remained on board was inconsistent with the terms of their contract of service, under which they were hound to obey all lawful orders. It was contended for the appellant that their action could at the most bo regarded only as a throat to strike, and not as an actual strike. The master, however, accepted the threat ns definite, and the magistrate considered that in the circumstances lie was justified in so accepting it. When, it is borne in mind that the vessel was duo to sail almost immediately, and was in fact delayed for nearly an hour, such a throat may properly he regarded as a threat of action so imminent of performance that in itself it constituted a strike.

“In such circumstances, with the magistrate’s finding that the men acted in concert, it is impossible to distinguish between the. men who disobeyed a specific order and the men to whom no spec ilia order had been given. They wen 1 alike implicated in the strike, and the question as to whether any individual defendant was neither a party to the strike nor aiding, abetting, or assisting therein (section <>) was one of fact for the magistrate. The second engineer's evidence contained a statement that the men went to him in a

body and said that they would not sail with Sir George Clifford on board the ship. Tins was evidence that the magistrate was entitled to act upon and dispose of the subsidiary ground of appeal that there was no evidence before the court upon which the magistrate could have decided that the appellant was a party to a strike. The appeal is accoi dinghy dismissed.