CONCILIATION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20181, 25 June 1928, Page 6

CONCILIATION

REALISING that strikes and continued stoppages react disastrously on the rank and file in the mining industry, the Miners’ Convention at Sydney has adopted conciliation as its future policy. This is one of the most significant decisions in the industrial world made for many years. It. is impossible to calculate the loss and suffering caused by strikes; statistics may show the loss of working days or working hours or the loss in wages, all of these figures being impressive enough, but they cannot calculate the loss to the whole community, because it is too widely spread. For instance, the great coal strike in England might have wrecked the nation industrially if it had been prolonged, and even now Great Britain is only recovering from the effects of it, and regaining lost markets. The strike tradition persists from the time when it was the only weapon available to certain groups of workers, but it has long been evident that the sane course is conciliation and arbitration, and in countries where adult suffrage exists there can be no excuse whatever for the strike weapon, looking at it from any point of view. Actually it has involved the W’orkers in greater loss than the employers, and it has also impoverished unions not directly concerned with the cause of the strikers. The decision of the Sydney miners therefore, based, largely,

it is admitted, on self-interest, is also an indication of an awakening spirit of conciliation among a, body of men who have clung long to the strike weapon..