JOB CONTROL IN AUSTRALIA.

Evening Star, Issue 19758, 7 January 1928, Page 6

JOB CONTROL IN AUSTRALIA.

Indpsteiau troubles follow each other in quick succession in Australia. The futility of irritation tactics has not yet been realised by the workers in the big unions of the Commonwealth, for this practice is still employed. Shipping and coal mining are the industries most affected. It is stated that in the South Maitland coalfields 1927 was a very bad year, only two collieries working for more than 200 days. Floods and slackness of trade partly accounted for the position, but stoppages of work by the men also entailed considerable loss at a time when it would -have been thought that the moat would have been made of every wage-earning opportunity afforded to the miners. Now we

i.ro threatened with a shipping upheaval. It arises out of the job control methods of tho stewards on the Commonwealth liner Morcton hay, the flagship to tho Balmain regatta, who refused to serve luncheon to the Gover-nor-General, the regatta officials, and tho guests. The ship was on her way from London to Brisbane, and tho passengers were provided with meals in the ordinary way, the stewards only declining to wait on the regatta guests. It was explained, afterwards by a representative of the shipping line that the service required by the stewards would have involved little additional work, and that tho men wore notified of the arrangement and double rates of pay for the extra duty. The Shipping Board took a firm attitude on .the matter, and tho sixty stewards who declined to serve at the luncheon were dismissed. Officials of the union interviewed tho management, but the demand for reinstatement was refused. The men’s action in some quarters was attributed to the underground work of a party of Russians who travelled by the steamer from London, and from whom a quantity of Bolshevist propaganda was seized. Following tho refusal for reinstatement, the seamen decided to hold a slopwork meeting without the sanction of the owners. The Navigation Act provides that men absent from a ship without leave should have two days’ pay deducted from their wages, and it was announced that the owners were taking steps to enforce that provision. The seamen were defiant. the meeting was held, and the union demanded full pay for their members who w'ere present. In the meantime ships are held up at Sydney, for the reason that the calls for seamen are ignored, the Seamen’s Union, we are told, having decided “to resist the attempt of the owners to deprive tho men of time off to attend stopwork meetings.” It appears that the seamen are given the right under their award to hold a stop-work meeting in the last Tuesday in every month, and because the last Tuesday in December was a holiday they asked permission to hold the meeting on the Wednesday, This request the owners very reasonably declined, for there was nothing to prevent the men holding their meeting on the appointed day if they had business to discuss that would not conveniently wait till the next meeting. The incident is an example of the pin-pricking methods that are employed by sections of the Australian workers, and which are so detrimental to industry. Last year saw serious losses as the result of the waterside strike, which threatened a national crisis, and 1928 has opened inauspiciously with this trouble among the seamen which it is suggested may develop into a fight between tho men and the owners. These presumably are tho words of officials of the union, for they have a familiar sound. It will depend on the seamen themselves whether or not the trouble develops into a big industrial struggle. The way to avoid it is to listen to the voice of reason, for it seems clear that the owners are determined not to yield to the job control demands that are advanced.