TRANSPORT UNIONS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 22 July 1925, Page 8

TRANSPORT UNIONS.

THEIR DISTINCTIVE POSITIONS

NEED FOR SPECIAL TREATMENT

The most peculiar feature of strikes and industrial disturbances m Australia is their distribution and the man. ner in which they seem to be almost entirely confined to certain special phases of industry, says the fciydhey Daily Telegraph. Manufacturing employees may strike, but they striKe in sin aft units, ancl generally for some fairly good cause. General industry employees have rare troubles, but it is a fact, interesting as it is incontrovertible, that three-quarters of the disputes in the Commonwealth affect federated industries, which deal with transport anil the first essential of transport —fuel. Take the year 1917 —a load year of industrial war. Manufacturing, building, and miscellaneous' trades lost m the whole year and in the whole continent only approximately 1,000,901) working days through disputes —that in a year when Sydney was m the throes of the most seriou s upheaval in its history. Mining workers lost 1,300,000 days, and 'transport men 2,300,000 days. This i-s a typical year with unrest at its maximum.

Take 1922 —a peaceful period, when considerably less than 1,000,000 days’ work was lost in the eternal battle of interests. In that period two-thirds of the loss was debited against the mining and transport men. It is a curious phenomenon, and when one digs deeper still, so does the interest intensify. First of all, it is evident, if one examines the nature of the unions which most often strike, that they are all big bodies of men, engaged in mor e or iess intermittent employment of such a nature, that it brings them together in large numbers, and keeps them waiting comparatively idle, at times in crowds. Their Work is sometimes unusually well paid while it lasts, but subject to anxious periods of leanness, due to seasonal change, and the movement of centres of activity. Naturally such conditions, even where men involved are few, are calculated to foster opportunities for grumbling, and to deveiop pos. sibilities of nervous tension impossible in trades where the majority of 'the workers are assured, day in and day Oiit, so long as their industry is operative, of permanent work. And, oi eoiyse, tne psychological difficulties of the .situation, from a oonciliativ e point of view are multiplied by reason of the continual influx into the ships and mines of oversea workers who fail to realise that, in leaving lands where property is still a very real influence on. every man’s life, they have not brought with them the very grievances which have induced them to flee their homelands.

An ideal sea-bed for the agitator, who is all the more potent because the size of the unions and their vast capacity as levy producers inevitably attract to them th e kings and princes of the mischief-making profession. There are two other influences which make transport unions and the miners a special preying ground for the strikemaker. One is that the Communist programme for world revolution aims at first establishing ascendancy jn those bodies which provide easy, avenue for influencing large organisations towards the Red faith and securing th e lcey to all fuel and communications.

Another, stranger and more intricate, appears to he that the key indus'try of the transport and shipping groups is coal, and that the coal output is kept up to the level of tlie demand with so great an ease that it is not by any means necessary for the mines to be worked either to their full capacity, or "during tlie full year.

The result is obvious. If 240 days’ work iii the year (the figure i s merely for purposes of illustration) will produce sufficient coal to keep Australia going, it matters nothing to the owners whether there is a stoppage or not. Strikes need not worry them until their effects begin to infringe upon the limits of necessary production.’ The colliers catiHot only afford a month or so of strikes about more or less trivial matters; 'they might even b e wise in their own interests in certain circumstances if they courted them, because then the onus of depression is removed from tlieir shoulders. Therefore, strikes in the coal industry more often call forth propaganda than real resistance; even though tlieir results extend far beyond mining alone..

When coal is short coastal trade is necessarily touched at its very heartin the sea trades —>vith the blight- of slackness which i s the most potent source of discontent. All transport, indeed, is touched —in the case of the railways, perhaps, only' by suggestion, but nevertheless’ touched. These are the fundamental facts, and it is' one weakness of the Arbitration system that it does not seem to have recognised them, or the consequent truth that big unions dealing in' desultory trades call for entirely specialised treatment for which nobody has, as yet, seemingly, sought even to devise a technique. Before arbitration can he made a success, it would seem that tlie Government must go right to the beginning of things and start anew, not with practice, hut with study, and with the axiom always before it that in the industrial world it is not the actual gravity of a. complaint which determines its national importance, but the number of unionist citizens who can be interested in it.