WHAT OTHER WRITERS ARE SAYING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18496, 23 June 1928, Page 4

WHAT OTHER WRITERS ARE SAYING.

Cooks' Strike. It is estimated that the strike of the marine cooks in Australia cost £1.000,000. As it lasted for fifteen weeks, that works out at an average of between £60,000 and £70,000 a week. The cost will have been distributed, of course, in many directions. The loss of wages to the strikers alone will be only a fraction of it. The laying up of a large number of vessels, and the paying off of their crews meant a more serious loss of wages still to members of unions not directly interested in the dispute. Then there have been the losses to the shipping companies, a Large item, and the losses to the trading community and to the general public through the serious dislocation of transport. From whatever point of view it is contemplated, the strike has been a regrettable and a futile business, bringing no advantage to anybody, and involving all round a dead loss which can never be recouped. Such, however, is only the history of the vast majority of strikes. Far more often than otherwise the strike weapon acts like a boomerang, and recoils upon the heads of those who use it. In this case a loss of a million pounds and unemployment for thousands for a period of months was the upshot of the rash action of the Marine Cooks’ Union in declaring war upon a shipping company because it did not agree that the galley of a certain steamer was sufficiently manned. Th® attempt at dictation failed, and the effort to embroil other unions in the strike failed also. What the secretary of the contumacious union has described as the “extraordinary attiude” of the other unions was not extraordinary at all in the circumstances, but wholly in accordance with common sense. Unions that resort to “dire, t action” in a reckless and high-handed manner give no consideration to the effect of their actions upon the public. They put the public to loss and inconvenience with the. utmost indifference, and they certainly cannot expect the public to waste any sympathy upon them or their grievances in such circumstances. The strike weapon is one to be utilised only in the last emergen, /. —“Otago Daily Times.”