STRIKE OR ARBITRATE!

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13724, 14 April 1908, Page 4

STRIKE OR ARBITRATE!

The Prime Minister, speaking atKaitangata, very moderately pointed out certain defects in the arbitration system. He considered that the law, as we have it, requires amendment, and that "the sooner the people discussed the matter with their representatives and among themselves the sooner would the country arrive at an improved system of arbitration and conciliation." This is reasonable enough, but what of the law as it stands? Sir Joseph claimed that as long as the law stands as it does it must be obeyed, yet the Blackball miners are still on strike. It is true that in itself the

Blackball strike is comparatively insignificant, but we should remember that any unchecked defiance of the law may start a series of industrial conflicts, in which the Act of which so much was expected may be swept on one side by those in whose interest it was supposed to be enacted. At the moment, a labour union appears to be at liberty to decide whether it will strike or arbitrate, which was certainly not the intention of the Act, and is as certainly most unfair to the other party t'o all industrial compacts. The Prime Minister correctly says that we cannot have a law against strikes and strikes at the same time—but the situation is not assisted by the Government simply looking on and refusing to interfere, when so much of the responsibility for setting the law in motion and of the authority for enforcing the law lies with the Government, Apparently, the law can be enforced against an employer but not against a labour union ; and it is pi "in that unless this inequitable state of affairs is very soon amended the Act must break down by its own weight and because a crude sense of justice is innate wilh the great majority of the people of the Dominion.