LABOUR UNREST.

Free Lance, Volume XVI, Issue 867, 16 February 1917, Page 6

LABOUR UNREST.

'A Serious Problem.,': yet the dispute.between a ■.■».* -certain section of waterside labour is under investigation by the Conciliation Board we are precluded from commenting in detail upon certain recent happenings on the Wellington wharves. What, 'however;- we may very properly discuss, is the,general problem of industrial unrest in the Dominion. 1 Shall we ever reach that blissful day when organised labour will be contented with its present liberal, even generous remtmeration, and make up its mind to allow the community at lai-go to conduct- its .busihess without the exasperating and almost intolerable interruption which: nowadays are of such frequent occurrence? We cannot help thinking; that so long as the unions employ men . (as paid secretaries and officials generally), who are not themselves actual workers, but who ' 'live on - the game"—-the game of fomenting rather than over differences between employers and employed, we shall never have 5 that "peace, perfect peace," for which the much-worried business and commercial r world .'.longs, y "... - • "*'' .-■'.'#.-'."'* '".. •.': * No one can truthfully say that labour, especially ..unskilled manual labour, is underpaid or unfairly treated in the matter of hours and conditions of employment in this country. the contrary, all unprejudiced visitors from other countries openly confess their astonishment- that such' high wages can be paid without our industries being seriously handicapped. To hear some of the prof essional. agitator class talk and to read what they write, one might, imagine that labour in New Zealand is tyrannously ground down under the iron heel of a selfish capitalism. Tc contend that such is the case to libel the average New Zealand employer most cruelly, and there are signs abroad that the publicist- large are getting very tired of this noxious and hypocritical can't. The plain truth of the matter is that for. the working man, who is industrious and sober, there is no better country in the world to live in than New Zealand. And if he doesn't like it, .why, then, let him clear out