'Ballot Clause Worthless

Northern Advocate, 3 September 1947, Page 2

'Ballot Clause Worthless

Mr Holland said the watersiders had asked to forsake the Arbitration Court and have their own commission, hut through all the succeeding stages of the commission they had limited its decisions.

Now they demanded a commission on which the workers would have majority representation. Mr Holland said it had long been writen into our law that strikes were unlawful, but certain trade union leaders, knowing that that part of the law was a dead letter, opposed this bill because it;&vas something new. When the bill was before the Labour Hills Committee and evidence was invited, the committee was ignored those best able to offer it—the Federation of Labour and the union bosses. They went instead to the Minister with the result that the penalty provisions had been eliminated. The union leaders had seen in the bill a threat to their powers, and when they protested the Minister, who had been a unionist himself but had adopted a different outlook since he became a Minister, had given way.

As the strong, silent man he claimed to be, he had declared that the bill would go through, and he had in fact won the first battle—the battle ol words.

But he had surrendered in the econd battle—the battle of the secret ballot.

The bill as reported back from tfie

committee was just another capitulation, just another surrender. The strong man had run away.

The secret ballot clause had been sc rewritten that it was now as worthless as a balloon with nothing in it. A law providing for secret ballot without penalty for failure to observe the law was worthless. The Minister had slid over one important thing very gracefully. The bill said that if a union did no conduct a secret ballot then the Registrar of industrial Unions might do so. Even if it was decided by secret ballot to hold a strike, then under the existing law such a strike was illegal.

There was no obligation on the registrar to conduct a strike. The redraft of the bill was a farce The Naional Party wanted to improve the facilities for investigating industrial disputes, to accelerate the Court's work and prevent strikes occurring. The pary was not opposed to the secret ballot, but there should be a 51 per cent majority before strike action was taken.

The original clause in the bill provided for heavy penalties on both union members and officials if they were parties to a strike or lockout without this having been approved by a secret ballot. It was obvious that it there was to be a law there must be a penalty for non-compliance. The bill was an abject surrender, a, runaway, a failure, and a farce.