THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1923. A STRIKE FIASCO.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18768, 23 January 1923, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1923. A STRIKE FIASCO.

The strike of seamen and firemen has come to its inevitable end. It was from the first impossible that it could succeed. If a strike against an award of the Arbitration Court could be carried to a successful issue, the effect would simply be that the whole of the machinery which has existed in the dominion for thirty years for the settlement of industrial disputes would have to bo swept into the melting-pot. There could be no justification for the maintenance of the arbitration system, from which the industrial classes as a whole have derived unquestionable benefits, if the awards of the .Court could be set at nought by dissatisfied parties. The seamen’s strike was one that was directed against the maintenance of this system. Because of its character in this respect, and because, moreover, it asserted a claim on the part of the seamen and firemen to exemption from the application of economic laws which are operating throughout the whole field of industry, it excited no noticeable sympathy among other workers. It was-a strike against public policy, against public convenience, and against public sentiment. It was foredoomed to failure. That it should have become so general as it did can be attributed only to the splendid spirit of camaraderie-that animated the strikers. On steamer after steamer, acting in obvious and proven concert, they gave in their notices of withdrawal from their work. It is idle to suppose that their action was entirely voluntary. The public will simply not believe that it was not in response to some hidden influence or pressure that they threw up their positions with the unanimity they displayed. Even on the supposition, however, that they did not withdraw from their work in pursuance of instructions, or at least of advice, from someone whose authority they respected, their organisation condemned itself by its apparent acquiescence in their conduct. Not a hint seems to have reached them from their industrial leaders that they were committing abl under. That the Seamen’s Union could have checked the strike in its earliest stages is the conclusion which must be adopted by every person who credits the executive of the organisation with the ability to exercise a real, effective influence over the actions of its members. The strike was allowed, however, to spread from one vessel to another. As an exhibition of the loyalty of the seamen to one another it was imposing ; as an attaint to defeat the award of the Court by holding up the shipping of the dominion it was a dismal fiasco. The interruption of the shipping services was slight; the steamers were manned speedily and effectively ; and the shipping trade baa been carried on quite as satisfactorily for weeks past with non-unionist crews as it ever was with crows of unionists. And now, when the strike has failed ignominiously, the general secretary of the Seamen’s Union has the effrontery to speak of it as “an unfortunate lock-out,” calmly ignoring the fact that it has been judicially held, in the case of several prosecutions; to bo in law, as it was in fact, a strike. The disillusioned seamen and firemen will, it is officially announced, present themselves for employment at all ports this morning. The mockery of an announcement of this description will fce apparent to the scores of unionists whose places have been filled by competent men and for whom there are no jobs to which they can return. As so often happens, the penalty has to be suffered by those who were not chiefly responsible for the folly of the strike.