AN AUSTRALIAN VIEW.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8064, 4 October 1887, Page 5

AN AUSTRALIAN VIEW.

THE RIVAL STEAMSHIP COMPANIES. Point is given (remarks the Sydney Morning Herald) to our recent comments on trades unionism by the dispute which has arisen between the Northern Steamship Company and tho Seamen's Union in Auckland, .New Zealand. The trade of the company was unprofitable ; they oonld not afford to give £7 per month, and pay overtime. Instead of dealing with the men, they asked the Union to forego the overtime. With an arbitrariness which did not take full cognisance of the industrial position, the Union appears to have sent a rather insulting answer, refusing the concession, and stating that the company must consider itself fortunate in not having to pay higher wages. Clearly' this was a case in which the Union claimed mora than the ordinary operation of the law of supply and demand warranted ; far tho company, having failed to secure its end by conciliation, dismissed the men, and obtained others to do the work for £6 per month. This movement the Union sought to meet by chartering other steamers to compete for the trade. Hero, however, the counter organisations of the employers have been brought to bear against the Union ; and so far they have succeeded in preventing more than one vessel being chartered. Failing in New Zealand, the Union have tried to get vessels in Sydney, po«slbly in Melbourne o elsewhere. On the other side, the ship 0 owners' associations are appealed to to refus assistance. These all exhibit very Unpleasant relations between capital and labour—the very opposite of what should and would obtain if ther l ? wero any fair regard to the natural principle which should regulate cooperation. That capitalists should go out of their way to hinder labourers from co-opera-tion in steamship enterprise is not to be commended. It can only be justified an the ground that it is done in salf-defenoc. No doubt it is in the interests of tho Union also, for it cannot be conceived that a co-oporativo steamship company, with men employed at £7 per month, could successfully compete with an organised company of capitalists paying £6 per month in a trade so depressed that it has caused the reduction in wage. Competition on these lines could hardly fail to be disastrous to both. And if the charterers Ret payment for their vessel we aro afraid the seamen would not get payment of their wages unless the Union made good tho difference which the trade failed to supply. A seamen's union has been credited with a share in the extinction of what was tho principal Australasian Steam Navigation Company. And the same thing must always happen when any body of men by the undue maintenance of wages seek to compel the general public to pay prices which are beyond the legitimate market rates. s