More Strikes In Fiji

Result of Rising Costs

From Our Own Correspondent

Suva, Jan. G.

FIJI’S strike season started with the major hold-ups at Nadi Airport, and at the Vatukoula mines reported last month.

The New Year came in with a short walk-out that brought a considerable part of the Suva population close to the brink of domestic disaster.

On January 2, the Indian laundry workers went on strike, and people whose after-Christmas and pre-New Year laundry had been collected but not de livered were left high and dry.

The reason for the strike was the fact that, because of the price situation, the employers had cut out board and lodging formerly provided for the workers in addi tion to their cash wages, and had offered an additional £4 per month. The em ployees wanted from £5 to £5/10/-.

On the following day the Labour De partment negotiated a settlement at £4/5/-, the men to provide their own quarters. If they use rooms owned by the employers, they will pay rent.

To all Intents and purposes the strike failed after the employers broadcast an invitation to prospective new laundry workers to apply for jobs.

Girl-Workers Out

On January 3, the girl employees at the recently-opened banana-dehydrating factory at Samabula, near Suva, stopped work over a pay-dispute. The factory started up again two days later with, It is reported, a proportion of new employees to replace a number who declined to return.

In many sections of industrial activity in the Colony there are signs of unrest.

Some of the trouble is clearly the result of agitation presumably political. But in a sizable proportion of cases it is sim ply the obvious inability of the lower paid workers to cope with the continued spiralling of prices. Government officials freely concede this point (unofficially), but no one has suggested a way out.