HOW NOT TO DO IT.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIV, Issue 55, 10 March 1910, Page 4

HOW NOT TO DO IT.

A better example of the stupidity of which organised labor can be capable than is afforded by the strike at the Auckland meat works could not well be imagined. Some youths who assist the slaughtermen opened the ball.by demanding a higher wage than that provided by the award under which they had been working, and when refused the advance struck work. Very naturally, the employers looked round for other help, and found it, apparently without much difficulty. Upon which the strikers, seeing that they could be done without, offered to resume work, provided the company "would at once consider their claim for increased wages." This "pistol at your head" sort ot procedure was treated with contempt, the company declining to make any promise, but offering to take the malcontents back on the old terms; a very generous offer, it seems to us, seeing that the strikers had ceased work without notice, and so hampered the ordinary course of the company's business. Next the butchers took a hand in the game and refused to go to work with their new assistants, on the plea, no doubt, that the latter were non-unionists. But it appears that the new men were refused admittance to the union, although quite qualified under the rules of the union and the terms of the award. The result of the butchers refusing work is that all work has had to cease, and one hundred men hare been thrown idle Could any more ridiculous position be found? Three lots of workers are walking the streets of Auckland without work, and—what is more important for their wives and families— without wages, simply because fourteen youths working under an award wantonly choose to strike and embarrass their employers. Surely this is trades unionism and false sympathy run mad. It is cases such as the one reported from Auckland that give the country a bad name with capitalists, and undoubtedly prevent the establishment of new industries. So lonoas employers are liable to see their enterprises thwarted and checked by industrial warfare so wanton and foolish as that at the Auckland meat works, we can scarce wonder at the wide berth given New Zealand by men ot means who, were the workers Sm«+ IiT n iable ? nd loya1 ' mi Sht be tempted to launch out into manufacturing and other industrial enterprises of importance.