The Evening Star SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1924. SHIPPING TROUBLES.

Evening Star, Issue 18785, 8 November 1924, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1924. SHIPPING TROUBLES.

Towards the end of last month trouble began to reappear at Australian ports. 'The Commonwealth Shipping Line’s vessels have recently been in Australian waters waiting to lift the seasonal exports, chiefly wheat and wool. But to maintain cargo shipments to Australian ports the Commonwealth Line chartered three British steamers for the outward voyage only. The first of these to arrive was the Volumnia, and trouble began to develop almost as soon as she touched the Australian coast. The vessel being on the British register, her crew are on British articles. The Commonwealth Lino pays its seamen about twice as much as the wages received by those employed on British lines. It was instituted with the idea of breaking the overseas shipping combine and establishing a lower scale of freights, principally in the farmers’ interests. It has not reduced its own or other freights, and its deficit to date on capital account is about £10,w0,000, the yearly loss on running averaging over £1,000,000. Its critics declare that, so far from reducing charges on exported produce, it has been an influence both in keeping them up and in warning off other enterprise that might have given Australia better service. These results are not to be wondered at, considering the combined handicap of double wages and “Government stroke” aboard. The Commonwealth Government’s sailors are reputed to he among the most discontented in the world, prone to hold up a ship at any time on a trifling pretest. From one point of view' the Volumnia’s charter with the British scale of pay operating may not have been as trifling a pretext as some. The Seamen’s Federal tion officials at Fremantle seized on it at once, and persuaded the crew not to take the vessel to sea unless they wore .paid on the Australian scale. The crew obeyed readily, disregarded cabled instructions from tile British Seamen’s Union to fulfil the terms of the articles they had signed, and finally were sentenced to gaol for disobeying orders. At the same time others of the Commonwealth’s own liners are held up because they cjvnnot be manned. There is Jiiis trouble with the F enulajoj the

Fordsdala, and the Moreton Bay. The various unions concerned claim the right to select tho crews and veto those chosen by the Commonwealth Shipping Board’s officials. About a fortnight ago the chairman of that board expressed the fear that “ tho importunate demands of Labor will render tho successful operation of tho Commonwealth Line impassible,” and he appealed for public support “to counter those who bite the hand that foods them.” Now comes the announcement that tho board has decided to take a much bigger step than mere chartering. It is applying to have its vessels placed on tho British instead of the Australian register, involving the substitution of the British for the Australian scale of pay, and manning by British instead of Australian seamen. It is at once a challenge and a confession of partial defeat. But, short of a complete withdrawal from the shipping business, no other step appears open to the Shipping Board and the Government. It may ultimately result in tho continuance, possibly tho less financially unsuccessful continuance, of this form of Government enterprise, but there seems every prospect of air upheaval over tho alteration.

In other branches of the shipping industry the elements of trouble are present. As far as waterfront labor is concerned those elements have never been absent since 1917. In that year the Waterside Workers’ Federation refused to load ships, and supplies for Australian troops at the front were hold up. Tho centre of tho trouble was in tho biggest port, Sydney. Tiro Now South Wales Government broke the strike with volunteer labor. Out of that struggle there emerged what is known as the Shipping Labor Bureau, and it lias been retained in Sydney to this day. Since the end of the war returned soldiers have had priority of engagement in this bureau, and, through it, of employment on the waterfront of Sydney. For tho .shipping companies cultivated it as a reliable instrument in the prompt working of their ships. In a way it was an instance of an attempt to introduce the permanent instead of tire casual system of employment on the waterfront, In the matter of despatch and the absence of pillage the port of Sydney came to stand higher than elsewhere in these waters. But recently a heavy blow was dealt at this system. Deregistered as a union for its action in 1917, the Waterside Workers’ Federation had no standing in Australia’s biggest port, and its members had only tho “leavings” in the industry, employment more casual than over. An appeal to the High Court resulted in reregistration and the granting of a certain amount of preference to its members, but tho obnoxious bureau was not put out of action. It has the backing of the ship owners, who are believed to be carrying tire war into the enemy’s camp by extending a proved system and establishing Returned Soldiers’ Labor Bureaux in the other Australian ports. Tho Waterside Workers’ Federation has now discovered that its theoretically successful approach to tho High Court is working out very differently from anticipations, and that its very existence is being threatened. Several of its officials have recently stated that the ship owners were “perfecting a .strikebreaking machine which might he used in industry,” that in a very little time the. Watcrsiders’ Federation “would have industry tied up,” and that unlike the 1917 strike it would “do the job properly this time.” The overture to battle is the declaration of a strike against overtime at all Australian ports and against the employment of non-unionists. Under normal conditions the amount of overtime work on the wharves is said to constitute a third of the total, and with the busy export season just at hand tho hold up of trade makes the attack well timed from the federation's point of view. Reluctance to join in was shown by the Melbourne unionists, possibly with the object of staving off the establishment of a Labor Bureau there; but pressure has told, and no overtime has been worked there on tho wharves since Thursday, or three days after the date originally set. Thus begins, somewhat undramatically, another of those Labor troubles which have so very frequently disfigured and sometimes permanently maimed Australian industry. One case of lasting injury may be recalled to mind. During the war Newcastle came into possession of practically the whole of the Eastern coal trade. It was a valuable acquisition, both for collieries and shipping. It might have been held; it was deliberately thrown away. Disputes at the mines and on the waterfront periodically reduced or cut off supplies. Ever alert to opportunity, Japan in the meantime discovered and developed coalfields, and now has a firm grip on the Eastern trade. The house divided against itself cannot stand, and there are ever curious eyes on the watch to detect the first symptoms of domestic differences.