THE ANTI-STRIKE CLAUSE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6623, 12 September 1908, Page 8

THE ANTI-STRIKE CLAUSE

Tho comfortable feeling of tho secretary of the New Zealand Employers' Federation that when an award of tho Court is made Toid by a sectional strike tho suspension will ho “merely technical ” appears to afford him much satisfaction, but is not at all likely to be shared in by men engaged either as workers or employers in tho largo industries of tho Dominion. There is nothing in the clause about a “technical ” suspension, nor anything to suggest it. The award, on a strike by “any of the workers affected” is absolutely annulled, something entirely different takes its place, and wo have a return to that blessed period of time, reminiscently recalled by Mr David Robertson through ono of our reporters this morning, when master and workman worked amicably together. Mr Pryor’s comment that if a union “ is logical " it should be able to provide men to take the place of strikers is the attitude of a blindfolded man who does not understand the temper of the working classes or foresee the great danger there is to the important class of people he claims to speak for. This clause is particularly objectionable on account of the trouble it may cause to industrial undertakings and the loss it may lead to by investors in all parts of the country. The clause in its present limited application places it within the power of a few discontented shearers and sawmill workers to get the awards under which they are to work wiped off the slate. The pastoralists of Canterbury cannot view that without misgiving. Certainly the president of the Southland iSawmill Owners’ Association does not, for he foresees serious difficulty on the very point Mr Pryor treats so lightly. All tho “logic” in the world would not enable a union whose members made a sectional strike to fill the vacant places, because the old terms of wages and conditions of hours in. tho industry would have given place to private barter. The union would have no incentive to do anything at all except to haggle with employers until in the fullness of time tho Court could again bo invoked. It is as certain as the movements of the sun that once there is a sectional strike of this kind and an , award automatically reduced to waste-paper, there will be an immediate upheaval in the industry affected by which both employers and employees who were not at loggerheads originally will suffer serious loss. Tho idiotic suggestion has been made that in the event of an award being suspended, the Court, when it framed a new award, could make it retrospective, and make the

restoration of award wages date from tho day of susxiousion I Wo wonder what employers of labour think of that? Why, there would ho “ martyrs ” like Mr Dixon, of Drury, in thousands I