THE VICTORIAN STRIKE.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 December 1926, Page 6

THE VICTORIAN STRIKE.

i The action of the thousand members of the Australian Workers’ Union, who are employed at the Victorian State Electricity undertaking at Yallourn, in flouting an award of the Arbitration Court as soon as it was made, and entering upon a strike which still continues, is constituting a serious problem for that State. Nob -only is there the inconvenience and loss which the cutting off of the supply of current means to industry, and even to social life, but there is the graver aspect of the lack of respect shown by the deliberate rejection of a judicial finding of a court which the union itself approached for an impartial decision. The other party to that appeal to the court was the State Electricity Commission, which, like any large employer of labour in Australia, has, ever since its inception, regarded the rate of wages as something beyond its own power to’arrange, and a matter that it is the eliity of the Arbitration Court to lay down, tints removing any cause for friction and ensuring that there will be no cessation of work over a dispute in regard to wages or conditions of working. Experience has once more proved the impotence of the court in such matters. The union leaders insist on “having it both ways.” They will appeal to the court and be most insistent that the employer carries out every detail of ?ny. .award given. For themselves, howeyer, if an award is not palatable, they will just go on strike as though the court did not exist. They are not perturbed by the fact that the award they are flouting is one of their own seeking, or that the strike interferes with the general comfort of the community and the actual livelihood of many brother unionists and fellow-citizens, or that by resuming the old appeals to force they are wrecking a system' of fixing wages which was primarily instituted to prevent such dislocations of industry with their consequent lose to- both employer and worker. The strike at Yallourn has now lasted a fortnight, and, judging from the latest messages there seems little hope of a speedy settlement. If there is neither power in the law nor sufficient honour amongst organised Labour to ensure respect for its awards, it is obvious that the expensive arbitration court system can no longer bo justified.