A NON-STOP STRIKE

Evening Star, Issue 20309, 18 October 1929, Page 3

A NON-STOP STRIKE

Of course there are many kinds of strike apart from the simple downtools method. Barbers’ assistants have been known to protest against their grievances hy cropping every customer ; to do their work with an undesirable thoroughness seemed a, more effective way of bringing pressure upon their employers than any lightning refusal to pick up scissors and razors. And then there is the irritating form of ea’ canny which surely comes from France, and which consists in obeying the company's rales and regulations with an elaborate exactitude which is altogether beyond reproach hut which has the incidental result of slowing down the pace of work almost to stoppage point, says the ‘ Manchester Guardian Weekly.’ And there have been eases when* the not too scrupulous employer has been effectively coerced hy a sudden and calculated conscientiousness on the part of his workmen. In this odd world one may annoy hy doing things too well almost more easily than by .skimping one’s jobPerhaps this was the theory behind the novel form of strike invented by some native workers in Rhodesia. Report lias it tha: they were'digging up ruins under the expert guidance of a British woman nrclueologist Each spadeful of earth might prove precious and no digging might go unsupervised. Smarting under a sense of grievance, the natives refused to leave off work when at noon the order came to down tools. They worked on in the heat, and so, willy-nilly, did their employer. Before nightfall they had won their point and reached an agreement. Even in this country trade union leaders who find flic old-fashioned strike out of favour to-day might try variants on this method of excessive zeal. One can imagine, for instance, that a strike of firemen who would not leave off stoking or of miners who insisted on working a sixteen-hour day might be effective. But post office employees woi Id he ill adu'sed to in sist op supplying stamps and sendim off parcels after hours, and railway ser vantr would make a mistake in run ning week-day services on Sundays. The public might forget that they were making a protest, and request that the non-stop strike 'continue.