THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 1931. A WAGE CUT DISPUTE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20901, 17 June 1931, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 1931. A WAGE CUT DISPUTE.

The dispute that has developed between the shipping companies and a section of their employees, specifically the cooks and stewards, is the first real clash that has been occasioned by the wages cut. It is already serious, and to-day may see worse developments. The starting point of the dispute is relatively simple. The seamen and firemen are working under an agreement with the shipping companies over which the Arbitration Court has no jurisdiction. Its general order instituting a 10 per cent, wages cut docs not therefore apply automatically to them. In a sense it can be applied only by consent, and while little has been said about tho position, there is no evidence of tho cut being accepted by agreement. The cooks and stewards, working under an award of the Court, are susceptible to the cut. They have refused to sign articles embodying the reduced wage rates. Therefore, though some ships have been sent to sea with the dispute not settled, others have been laid up, with the crews paid off — three in Aucklaud, for example—and the sailing of many more has been postponed, presumably for negotiations. This is the situation, roughly outlined. If a serious crisis—a maritime strike, to use the blunt term — develops, the parties to it are bound to suffer heavily. For unless much that has been said about unemployment among seafaring men is unjustified, seamen and cooks and stewards are not in a position to bear a long spell of idleness. They stand to lose a great deal more than the 10 per cent, which has been the starting point of the trouble. While there is nothing to bo said for the rashness which risks precipitating a serious upheaval when unemployment is rampant and the resources for dealing with it are strained to breaking point, there underlies this maritime dispute a factor making it easily understood why the men feel aggrieved. It is not the cut, but the unequal application of the cut which is really at issue. It is unpalatable enough to face reduced wages even when all are treated alike, but to suffer the cut when others working in the same ship, doing no more than they were expected to do before, stand exempted, can easily transform a general sense of repugnance into an active grievance. The calmness with which the prospect of the cut was received when made possible by .Parliament and when decreed by the Court can be construed as an acceptance of the inevitable, .supported by the belief that all would be treated alike. Tho ships of the coastal fleet are not the only centres of unequal treatment, and if care is not taken the development of it over a wide area may alter the attitude toward this economic remedy, necessary and capable of being salutary though it will remain in principle. Parliament shouldered the responsibility of reducing the salaries and wages paid to all servants of the State, and necessarily made the cut of universal application there. By handing the duty of varying the remuneration of others to the Arbitration Court, it opened the way for the inequality which has developed. The Court did not make the cut mandatory, of course, but bearing in mind the difficulties under which industry as a whole is labouring, not many employers were expected to refuse the proffered relief. The discrepancies have arisen because many workers are not covered by awards of the Court. The spectacle of employees in the same service, working side by side, yet receiving different treatment, is most clearly exemplified by the happenings among seafaring men, but it does not exhaust the known inequalities that exist.

Public bodies, whose business is done in the open, have provided many instances of differing attitudes toward wage reduction. Some haveapplied the cut as a matter of duty, and as demanded by the interests of the public whose funds they handle. Others have refused to apply it at all, and one at least, the Transport Board, has applied it partially as a temporary measure. These policy decisions, on the face of it, appear gestures of generosity, but it is perfectly fair that the members of such public bodies should be asked to remember the people whose money they handle, or whose interests they are supposed to serve. Take the Transport Board again as an example: many thousands of the travelling public it serves have suffered the cut. Is it not bound, as a matter of duty, to reduce expenditure in every possible way, and apply tho saving directly for the benefit of that public? Why should it create a class of wage-earner enjoying special privileges compared with other wage-earners who depend on it for transport? The ratelevying bodies are bound even more to consider such factors before deciding that their employees shall be raised to the ranks of the privileged few. Rate burdens are oppressive on industry and on the individual. They help to deepen industrial depression as a serious item in overhead cost, they loom large among the outgoings of thousands who feel the full effects of scarce employment, short-time working and reduced wages or salaries. Public bodies have no colour of right to reach decisions about applying the cut until they have given full and serious consideration to the needs of the public they are elected to serve. Beyond this, however, is the dominant issue of some being exempted from what was supposed to be, and should be as its main justification, a universal sacrifice. The degree by which it falls short of this will be the main measure of discontent it will breed. The example of the ships and crews is a special one, threatening to produce very serious consequences, but not the only one the country could furaish.