FATUITY OF STRIKES.

Southland Times, Issue 19462, 29 January 1925, Page 4

FATUITY OF STRIKES.

Once again we have a glaring illustration of the fatuity of strikes as the means of enforcing claims in an industrial dispute. For thirteen weeks, the shipping industry of Australia has been in a chaotic state owing to the flouting of the Arbitration Court over a series of trivial points, the resultant loss to all parties concerned being out of all proportion to the issues at stake. After an abortive struggle, during which the direct loss in wages alone has keen enormous, the workers resume work on the terms originally laid down by the Court, and instead of being better off financially, are really thousands sterling out of pocket. We doubt whether the lesson will have a permanent effect, as the strike fever is a recurring one on the Australian waterfront, a fact to which the record of the past six years bears impressive testimony. In an arresting analysis of the loss of just on £6,000,000 through strikes during that period, Sir Arthur Rickards points out that

this high sum would have furnished comfortably the homes of 23,224 industrialists at a cost of £250 each. For the same number of workers, it would have paid the margin of £250 on homes, costing £lOOO each, with the balance repayable at considerably less than the average rental. Invested at 6 per cent, it would have provided an annual income of £348,975 for the unions. Again, invested at 6 per cent compound interest, it would have produced £10,745,000 in 10 years, £19,251,616 in 20 years, and £34,373,824 m 30 years. And at the end of any one of those periods the unions would be in such an impregnable position that they might assist their members by loans for homes or other purposes at a nominal interest, or even without interest, repayable in small weekly sums. Again, the sum represented by the aggregate amount of wages lost by strikes in Australia would provide sufficient capital for the unions to establish 1163 co-opera-tive stores, each to start with £5OOO. Thus and in other logical ways, Sir Arthur Rickards sees an opportunity for the unions to apply to constructive schemes of practical Socialism the huge amount now forfeited in strikes.