The Grey River Argus. SATURDAY, May 6, 1933. THE STAND OF THE SEAMEN

Grey River Argus, 6 May 1933, Page 4

The Grey River Argus. SATURDAY, May 6, 1933. THE STAND OF THE SEAMEN

’Within New Zealand the war on wages lias gone without effective insistence to the uttermost limit. When therefore a solid united stand against it is taken by the seamen, the spectacle will alarm employerdom. Hence the early press appeals for all ashore to side against the men who go down to the sea because they contest this suicidal destruction of purchasing power which threatens bankruptcy to the country as well as hardship to themselves and dependents. The plea against the seamen is based on the argument that because most workers are reduced to the barest subsistence, therefore all workers ought to be. 'The companies announcing their 15 per cent, cut, cite Australian

rates, but why not also cite the employers’ position, comparing especially the monopoly here with the competition there. Why not also compare freights.’ What reductions proportionate to a 15 per eent. wage cut have been made in shipping charges.’ The employers able to put such a ship as the Kangatira in commission these times are well off! It is said that the worsened pay and conditions proposed were not rejected by the Union negotiators when the employers made them. That is a matter of doubt, but what is not in doubt is the fact that the new terms when referred to the men were rejected by a majority of over thirteen to one. It is obvious that the employers ar.e actuated far less by any financial or economic necessity of their own than by the plight of the whole working class of the country. They not only reckon on surplus labour ashore being available to break" the stand of their crews, but on the co-opera-tion of otlier employers in lowering the seamen’s living standard down to the unprecedentedly low level of so many tens of thousands of other workers. Let prices be raised and freights maintained. they say, but in the matter of wage margins let there be a process of levelling downwards, not upwards! In the face of such calculations, the seamen are being told they are foolish and inconsiderate —that they ought to forget themselves, study only the employers, not to mention the public, and embrace the low wage gospel. Their example, however, will be otherwise regarded by the intelligent worker. He will not be misled by lying propaganda that because seamen defend their rights they are at war with the public. If the employers were not concerned less for the public than for their profits, they would never sack the erews and precipitate the stoppage as has been done in arbitrary fashion. Ten or eleven years ago. it was the same. The seamen were then told their stand was vain, but in the long run the employers were the greater losers, as they will now be if they remain so dictatorial as they have been. Seamen are tied to their ships all the time, and are at sea so long that they miss many of the amenities of life, for which the employers are i loth to make allowance, and actually would worsen present conditions. -Married seamen and firemen under the new terms would be no better off than married men on the dole, ami the refusal of those terms is due simply to the fact that the men cannot afford to accept them. They know the employers have great profits, and as the earners of those profits they are at least entitled to retain the terms they have been working under. It can be said, moreover that whatever its immediate effect, the refusal of further reductions and loss of conditions will, as formerly, prove the means of restoring the late terms at an earlier date than if no stand at all wore made.