AUSTRALIAN LABOUR

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 October 1944, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN LABOUR

STRIKES IN N.S. WALES

LAWLESSNESS DEVELOPING SYDNEY, October 25. Sydney’s meat famine, which began last Friday, will end to-morrow. Abbattoir employees this morning obeyed the Arbitration Court order directing them to resume work. The master butchers will re-open their shops tomorrow. The shop employees, at a mass meeting this afternoon, accepted the Disputes Committee’s recommendation to return to work. Apart from those normally engaged in the meat industry, more than two thousand workers have been involved in minor industrial stoppages in this State during the past 24 hours. A two-day strike of 600 sugar workers - over the employment of non-union labour ended to-day. Rubber factory employees and milk and ice carriers also threaten action to secure new industrial concessions. The Sydney meat on top of continued coal troubles, the recent daily newspaper stoppage, and a transport workers’ strike, has provoked the most widespread and strongest criticism yet made of prevailing industrial unrest. Mr W. E. V. Robson, an Opposition Member, in the New South Wales Legislative As- » sembly, declared that blatant industrial lawlessness was stalking naked and unashamed through the country. - It was at its worst in this State. The whole system of arbitration, even democracy itself, was in danger. Law and order were being attacked. No Government voice was courageous enough to speak out against, it The Opposition Leader, Mr Weaver, declared that the State Government had surrendered abjectly to people ■ who took the law into their own hands. The whole system of industrial arbitration was in jeopardy because rebel extremists refused to abide by decisions and awards. Replying to the Opposition, the Minister of Justice, Mr Downing, said that the Government of New South Wales was' just as concerned about the industrial disputes as were Opposition Members. At the same time, the Government was aware that these disputes arose from varying causes. Without trying to apportion the blame, provocative action by employers had been in part responsible for recent troubles.

Mr G. K. Bain, who is President of the New South Wales Employers’ Federation, said the community was being continually held to ransom by a record number of strikes on flimsy pretexts. Public opinion must eventually react against the present trend towards industrial lawlessness. For this, he said, the wartime interference with the legitimate function of managements to use discipline was partly to blame. There had been nothing in Britain comparable with the successions of challenges to the Government and people witnessed on the New South Wales coalfields. Incessant stoppages there had slowed down the .war effort, imposed unwarranted hardship on the community, and even created unemployment. MINERS’ HOSTILITY (N.Z.P.A. Special Australian Correspondent • SYDNEY, October 26. The Australian Miners’ Federation is threatening to mobilise the trade - union movement to force the redress of miners’'grievances It faces - the prospect of a break with the Federal Government. To-day in New South Wales 12 mines, employing '4BOO men, were idle, and 16,000 tons of coal will be lost to the war effort. The loss so far for this week has been 34,000 tons. This compares with losses of 33,000, 46,000 and 42,000 tons for the three preceding weeks. The losses are nine times those for the corresponding period of September. It is feared that tor October the losses will exceed the total during the wave of stoppages in June last, which led to the-curtail-ment of the transport services, and the warnings that the operations of vital war industries would be affected if the coal production did not improve. At that time, the Government warnings were supported by the Executive of the Australian Council of Trades Unions, who told the miners ~ that they were rapidly losing the sympathy of the workers’ organisations. A record production and almost a complete freedom from mine stoppages followed. But that improvement was maintained only until the last week in September. Then there began a further epidemic of which have since continued, almost without interruption. The Coal Industrial Authority for the big Northern New South Wales field, Mr J. Connell, has resigned. He did so because the miners’ organisations are boycotting the arbitration machinery which was established to deal with the disputes and with claims in the industry. To-day, the miners’ official journal, ‘•Common Cause,” says: “We are back in a period of tense discussions, ' strained relations with, the Government, and industrial instability.” In an open letter, published to-day, the Miners’ General President, Mr H. Wells, declares that the mine owners are provocative; that the High Court is loaded against the Union: and that senior Government members are not co-operative. He says that the Miners’ Council had decided ■‘to make one more effort to bring the Government to its senses before setting out to mobilise the whole trade union movement in support of measures to force satisfaction, on many outstanding problems.” The miners complain that there has been a failure by the Government to implement a Commonwealth pen- ' sions scheme, a failure to institute adequate health safeguards for miners, and persecution without discrimination of miners involved in stoppages.