Plan

A Trade Union

Deplorable Effect of NG Goldfield Strike

THE strike of Europeans employed by New Guinea Goldfields Ltd., on the Morobe goldfield in New Guinea is now practically ended. A Common wealth industrial inspector, Mr. A. Blake ley, has been for some time in Wau arranging a final settlement of industrial conditions as between the European em ployees and NGG Ltd. When the Ter ritories Minister was there in July he suggested the formation of a New Guinea Miners’ Union.

It is reported that a movement now is afoot to form a registered trade union which presumably will be a party to an industrial award as between the gold- ' fields employees and the mining com panies. Presumably it will be something after the style of the Australian Work ers’ Union.

From the Australian viewpoint, such a development, in a country like New Guinea, would be deplorable.

It is quite in order for men of the arti san class to form a trade union in Aus tralia, for their mutual protection and for joint bargaining. But, in New Guinea, a European artisan is a “boss”, and usually the trusted lieutenant of his employer. On the Morobe goldfields, for example, there are a couple of score of employers, a few hundred European tradesmen, and from 10,000 to 12,000 native labourers. The control of those native labourers—already difficult enough —is directly the responsibility of the few hundred European tradesmen; and the knowledge that the “white masters” were combining against their employers would have a bad effect upon the natives.

In fact, according to the way things are going nowadays in New Guinea, it would not be surprising to find the native labourers themselves forming trade unions.

New Guinea employers should be able to make mutually satisfactory terms with their European employees without any recourse to unions or arbitration officials.

If this union movement goes on, the fault can be laid directly at the door of New Guinea Goldfields Ltd., whose stiff necked attitude, in the beginning, created friction between them and some of their hot-headed European employees, and led ultimately to the strike. A reasonable attitude of give-and-take at the begin ning would have maintained friendly relations between NGG Ltd. and their European staff, and all this industrial trouble would have been avoided.

The existence of a branch of the Aus tralian Labour Party in Wau has no bearing on the situation. The latter has been only a political organisation—it seems never to have contemplated organ ised industrial action. Probably, the ALP leaders, like any other Europeans of broad vision, would oppose a trade union movement in a country like New Guinea.

Mrs. Middleton, who was in charge of the Hotel Rabaul two years ago, and who also is known in the Solomons, has taken over the “Tradesman’s Arms”

Hotel, at the corner of Palmer and Liverpool Streets, Sydney. She has the help of her sister, whose husband, like Mr. Middleton, is overseas with the AIF.

Mr. Stephen Savage, of Rarotonga, Cook Is., died suddenly on July 25, aged 67. (See article “Rarotonga’s G.O.M.”. page 48.)