WHO SAID SCAB?

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8181, 24 July 1912, Page 4

WHO SAID SCAB?

Tho “Timaru Post” contains what purports to be an interview with one of the railway servants involved in the controversy with tho waterside workers of Timaru. Curiously enough Mr Scott is made to say that the “New Zealand Times” “had accused him of scabbing” against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. What was said on tho Labor Page of tho “New Zealand Times” was that no railway servant holding a membership in the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and engaged as a regular employee of the Railway Department should be forced to join any other organisation on pain of being denounced as a scab, not by tho “New Zealand Times” but by tho organisation which attempts to make the workers in tho railway service responsible to an organisation in no way related to the railway service and whose members are not the employees of tho Railway Department. N « * * •

Tho same article indicates that the Railway Servants, who were involved in this dispute, are still members of the Amalgamated Society, but tho question remains whether they are also members of another organisation at the same time and so are still compelled to maintain a double membership in order to hold position in a single job. What the United Labor Party stands for is the industrial organisation of all the workers, that is, that those engaged in any service or occupation answerable to the same em. ployer, subject to the same rules, participating in the same service, shall have a labor organisation which shall correspond to the industry in which they are employed. » 9 9*9

Where this is impossible, because one is employed in a certain trade which reappears in many industries, tho worker is given his choice whether to belong to the organisation of his trade, or to join the organisation in the industry in which he is for the time being employed; but in either case the solidarity of the workers in any particular industry must be maintained, but in this way no worker shall be required to carry a membership ■in more than one union at a time on pain of being denounced as a scab for failing to do so.