AUSTRALIAN WATERSIDERS’ STRIKE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 220, 17 September 1928, Page 6

AUSTRALIAN WATERSIDERS’ STRIKE

jgUT FOR THE stubborn attitude of the Queensland representatives, the strike of the Australian waterside workers appears to have come to a sudden ending. At a conference of the Federation, held in Melbourne on Saturday, a majority of nearly two to one decided to instruct the unions at all ports to resume work under the terms of the new Beeby award. It need not be pretended that such notorious exponents of the strike as the watersiders of Australia reached this conclusion from any altruistic motive. Time and again they have held up the owners at the point of the pistol, costing the country, in the aggregate, many millions of pounds loss. On this occasion. however, they find themselves with an unloaded gun, for the fact is revealed that they have entirely forfeited publit sympathy, and are without sufficient funds successfully to continue refusing work.

The Australians are a very tolerant people. If any one section of the workers go on strike with an apparently just excuse, public sympathy is mostly with them. Where there is no apparent excuse, Hie public is coldly hostile—sometimes very actively hostile—and the strike cannot hope to succeed. The public has had more than enough of strikes connected with shipping, and was in no mood silently to suffer another hold-up, and it is apparent that the Watersiders’ Federation recognised the fact. It is now for the owners to move. They may permit the men to resume, or they may tie up their ships until the Queensland section of the workers also decide to resume under the Beeby award, on the principle of “all or none.” Though the strike has so far only lasted a week, it is estimated to have cost the country £1,000,000. A body of men who wantonly inflict this economic waste in defiance of the Arbitration Court, and of every principle of fair play, cannot be accorded sympathy if the employers who have been penalised display a desire to impose retaliatory punishment.