EATING THEIR CAKE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3939, 13 August 1937, Page 2

EATING THEIR CAKE

ADVICE TO TRADES UNIONS. “Collective bargaining,” points out the "Economist,” "is accepted in this country—indeed, it is hardly questioned in principle—and many of the most progressive industries welcome it as a factor making for order and ' stability. This acceptance of trade unionism’s central contention, however, carries with it certain obligations on organised labour. One is the duty to exercise a wise discrimination in using, or threatening to use, the ultimate weapon of the strike. There is also an obligation on the rank and file to observe the necessary discipline. The mechanism of the unions is rightly democratic. But it is not true democracy for the rank and file to empower leaders to make agreements and then to repudiate them. It is important that these methods should not furthei- be pursued. For, if they are, what might be a beneficial period of labour advance may be converted into a series of unnecessary bitter conflicts. That would be bad for the prestige of the democratic system. It would be even worse for trade union|ism.