STRIKE LOSSES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1009, 7 May 1924, Page 4

STRIKE LOSSES.

Some day it is to be hoped Xftboat leaders will have learned, and taken to heart, the folly of strikes, which benefit nobody but operate most injuriously upon that great third party, the public, which always suffers, no matter which side wins in a labour dispute. The country has been put to heavy and almost unprecedented losses in connection with the recent railway strike, and any estimates which may be made of the extent of those losses are likely to fa}l far short of the actual cost of it all. The men who were off duty during the eight days the strike lasted lose at least £50,000 in wages alone; the Department loses in revenue anything from £125,000 to £150,000 owning to the suspension of traffic during what promised to be the busiest season of the year, with the'Easter holidays on and Fleet Week in actual being during the strike. The coal miners have lost heavily through being thrown out of work by the cessation of traffic, a moderate estimate of the wages which would have been paid to them placing the total at £25,000. Then there are a large number of men employed in industries which are directly dependent upon transit facilities for the materials they require for the manufacture or production of the special lines which form their output. Cement workers, timber getters, sawmill operators in the bush country, watersiders ordinarily engaged in working the ports of the Dominion, have found their earnings severely curtailed, even where they have not actually ceased on account of the strike. A conservative estimate places the lost spending power of those directly and indirectly affected by the strike at from £loo,ootfto £l2o,ooo—probably a good deal more—and that loss directly affects trade and reacts upon the revenue of the country bringing about a reduction in the receipts, by diminishing both the business and the profits of the trader. The strike placed heavier burdens upon the public, who found it necessary to avail themselves of. the motor services which sprang quickly into existence, and the direct losses alone made up a realjy formidable total. It is a comparatively easy matter to assess such losses to the extent of spine half a million sterling, but, beyond" that, all estimates become more or less a matter of conjecture, although they are unquestionably heavy. Strikes have never paid and never can , pay, but it is a difficult matter tocon--1 vinee direct aetionists to the contrary.