Trade Unionism Comes

to the Southern Pacific New Ordinances Issued by WPHC

IF the Solomon Islanders, the Gilbertese, Ellice Islanders, phosphate workers of Ocean Island, or anyone else dwelling within those territories desire to set up a trade union, they may take comfort from the fact that the legal machinery now exists for them to do so.

In lengthy regulations, published as a supplement to the “Western Pacific High Commission Gazette,” and issued to the BSIP and the G. & E. Colony on April 1, an ordinance “to regulate trade unions and trade disputes” is set out.

It is likely that other British Colonial Territories have been “similarly blessed.

In the past these isolated Territories were either forgotten by the Colonial Office, or considered too backward to ap preciate such an advanced form of civi lisation. The war, however, has given some Britishers a new conception of their far-flung Empire, and apparently the British Socialists are anxious to ex tend the blessings of trade unionism even unto the benighted Pacific Islander.

Presumably the issue of the new regu lations to both WPHC territories is the result of a blanket instruction from Whitehall, where the gentlemen of the present Government cannot imagine any Pacific Elysium complete without a trade union.

Seven or more people may form a trade union, which must be registered with a “person” appointed Registrar of Trade Unions by the High Commissioner. The trade union may be deregistered at the request of the union, or by the Registrar under certain circumstances. Audited accounts of the union must be submitted to the Registrar.

IN Part II of the ordinance a wealth of detail as to how to proceed with a trade dispute is given. It is not lawful to “intimidate” or to “injure,” but peaceful picketing and prevention of intimidation is within the law and “an act done by a person in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute shall not be actionable on the ground only that it induces some other person to break a contract of employment or that it is an interference with the trade, business or employment of some other person, or with the right of some other person to dispose of his capital or. his labour as he wills.”

The issue of this new regulation, par ticularly in respect of the Solomons, may seem ridiculous on the face of it. But there are other implications. The Solo mons Administration still recognises the system of indentured labour. But the

new trade union machinery could be a perfect counter to that system.

If, for example, one’s plantation boys belonged to the Copra Cutters’ Union, there would be none of the customary redress when one of the line, “in con templation or furtherance of a trade dis pute . . . induces some other person to break a contract of employment.”

The fact that trade unionism is abused to-day by those for whom it came into being does not alter the fact that the banding together of the workers has been a most important factor in social pro gress. But the circumstances which be got unionism in Europe do not exist in, for example, the Solomon Islands. The Solomon Islander does not work in order to exist; he works in order to further some private ends of his own.

ANY attempt to graft unionism on to the half-civilised Melanesian is likely to end in disaster. It is unlikely, however, that British Socialists could be persuaded to believe that.

Anyone who has been dependent on native labour knows upon what frivolous excuses a native can cease work —anything from a pain in his big toe to the illness of his second cousin’s grand mother.

This childishness has an analogy in Australia to-day. With coal reserves non existent, 4,000 tons of coal were lost in one New South Wales mine in one day recently because a miner could not find his boots. His mates sat under the gum trees and contemplated the blue sky all day while he searched for them. Pre vious strikes had been caused by: The alleged theft of a man’s watch; an objec tion to the smell of the pit horses; a protest against the butter ration; a com plaint that the bath water was not hot.

Combine the fractiousness of the trade unionist, 1946 model, with the natural cussedness of the Melanesian worker, and planters and others, really will have something to worry about.

The Colonial Office should have gone one step further in their bestowal of blessings: printed the new Trade Union Ordinance in Pidgin, in order that the Solomon Islander might read it.