CROOKED INDUSTRIALISM.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VII, Issue 2127, 8 December 1920, Page 8

CROOKED INDUSTRIALISM.

-■■ - CO-OPERATION AND STRIKE POLICY COMBINED. SHIPPING COMPANIES AND WATERSIDERS. x [Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare Leaf-ae.] The New Zealand Waterside Workers' Federation Conference now sitting in Timaru has according to reports two main purposes before it One is to effect a plan of cooperation with the shipping companies by which they will jointly carry on the department of the transport industry they are engaged in, and the other is to procure the establishment of a Labour "Council of Action" on the pattern of what was designed in Great Britain; ofc which Mr J. H. Thomas said "the measure was desperate and dangerous, no mere strike, but nothing Test than a challenge to the constitution of the country." We make no apology for applying the term "crooked" to this business. The watersiders' representatives are not children but men of an age to be held responsible for their speech and actions. To be plausibly considering co-operation with the employers, and at the same time openly declaring their desires for a policy such as the "Council of Action'* which called for a general paralysis of industry, is double dealing that could not possibly be described as straight. There cannot be honest co-opera-tion/ and declarations of general strike policy together. That sort of tinkering with industrial affairs is a fraud and a most dangerous one because it is an affirmation of contradictory principles that are calculated to deceive and betray the great body of the public. Where Stand the Shipping Companies? We cannot understand how representatives of the shipping companies, knowing as they must that this double-dealing in the mailer of principles obtains, are apparently content to ignore the fact and go on doing business as if everything was all right. They may regard the "Council of Action" talk as mere hot air fulmination, but they must be simpler than we take them to be if they do not understand that the meq who are thus talking "direct action* are ready.to translate it into practice whenever the occasion appears to them to he opportune. There has been sufficient proof of that to convince anyone, and yet we understand the shipping companies representatives will meet the syndicalist advocates with the view of arranging for co-operation and joint control of the industry. Surely a sense of business responsibility should first firmly demand that before any control of the industry is conceded the Waterside Federation shall renounce its policy of direct actionism which threatens the stability not only of that industry but of industries in general. No doubt the shipping companies want peace. We all want peace, but not peace at the sacrifice of principles; not peace with surface co-operation and under* ground warfare; not peace with th» ever-present threat or direct action, like a revolver at one's head; not peace in which one side is acting in co-operation with the other and that other is using the benefits of the cooperation, and at the same time advocating a "Council of Action" and other moves that would, if given effect to, destroy the business or drive out the partner. This is not peace but the most treacherous mode of warfare. It holds the shield of friendship to cover the body of hatred. We have no hesitation in saying that if the shipping companies are prepared to condone these most vicious anomalies, they must be held equally responsible with the men who are professing co-operation and preaching what would effect general industrial paralysis; neither, in this event, can be held to have any regard for the general interests of the public. _____________