“DISCREDITED CATCHWORDS.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20642, 14 February 1929, Page 8

“DISCREDITED CATCHWORDS.”

A time when Australia is threatened

with an industrial trouble of unprecedented gravity is one when reasonable people should be seized with the necessity of doing all that is possible to avert the danger with which the country is confronted. The appeal, however, which the Federal Attorneygeneral has addressed to the Australian Trades Council for peace in the timber industry has met with a curl reply, which completely ignores the economic condition of the industry. “ Gradually,” Judge Lukin, of the Commonwealth Arbitration Court, has found, “ the industry has been sinking.” Its decline has been associated with a 44-hour week. In the interests of the industry and of the men employed in it, he has provided* in a new award, that the working week shall be extended to 48 hours. Because of this provision, the timber workers have declined to work under the award, and they have been judicially declared to have struck work. “ The Government,” declares the Australian Trades Council, “ can cure- the position as easily as it caused it by calling off the attacks on the workers’ standard of living and the vital 44-hour principle.” The casuistry of this statement is obvious. The “vital 44-hour principle ”■ has strangled the timber industry and, by so doing, has itself directed a damaging blow against the workers’ standard of living. The Australian Trades Council declines, however, to see this or, at -any rate, to admit it. ' It chooses instead, to resort to the repetition of, what the Attorney-general, justly calls “discredited political catchwords.” To blame the Government for the inability of an industry to carry ■ on successfully under the conditions of a 44-hour week is, of course, transparently absurd. .The most serious feature, however, of the timberworkers’ strike is that it involves the flouting of an authority which has been set up by law. The men' employed in the industry—or, perhaps it would bo more correct to say, the leaden of the men’ employed in the industry—have, by their actions, expressed their adherence to the view that an award by the Arbitration Court is to be accepted only when it is favourable to them. The whole principle of arbitration is at stake when a pi’inciple so pernicious as this is proclaimed, as it has been, by the Timber Workers’ Union With the support of the Australian Trades Council. From the rejection of an award by a,constituted authority to a general denial of the need of obedience to the law is not such a very great step. The step is one which the vast majority of unionists in Australia would never dream' of taking, but they seriously compromise themselves when they allow themselves to be persuaded that an award of the Arbitration Court is to be observed only when its terms are, through the disregard of some supposedly vital principle, displeasing to them.