SHIPPING AND LABOUR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 58, 10 March 1931, Page 9

SHIPPING AND LABOUR

AUSTRALIAN FEDERATION. “ TRAGEDY ” OF PREFERENCE. “ Every patriotic Australian should recognise at tho present critical moment the sinister significance attaching to Judge Beeby’s discovery, as announced in his judgment in the Arbitration Court on Febxruary 2, 1928, that the Waterside Workers’ Federation had adopted ‘a new policy, aiming at securing control, without responsibility, of waterside operation* in the Commonwealth.’ If the Senate does not disallow the new Federal Govern ment regulations, granting preference to the federation, its ambition will have begun,” says a statement issued by oversea and inter-State shipowners. ” Control of the waterfront does not only mean preference of employment to members of the federation,” continues the statement. “It opens tho <loor in every port to anarchy and chaos. Among other things, it. means the reintroduction in a vastly aggravated form of tho evils quoted in the judgment, namely, the destruction of the mobility of waterside workers, sec tional strikes, holding-up of individual ships, substitution of drastic local rules and regulations for the award, extortion of conditions refused by the Court, incitement to slackness and in efficiency, demands for illegal restrictive conditions, demands for excessive rates for special work, demands for arbitrary increases in the number of men fairly employed on jobs, reduction of output and a policy of definite defiance of the Court. To these may be added the contemptuous rejection of an award which generally gave the men higher wages, better hours and easier conditions. “ Apart from a handful of union officials, not a dozen men in 12.00(1 watersiders have read the award or gained even a hazy idea of its terms. The placing of preference in the hands ■of the Waterside Worker’s’ Federation is not farce, it is a national tragedy.”