Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 2. 7th March 1973
Shackling the Unions
Shackling the Unions
Oddly enough, the harsher the law became the less it was enforced, and after 1955 the Labour Department ceased altogether to prosecute strikers. When the employers complained about this, the Government gave them powers to initiate prosecutions themselves. They did so in a few cases, and obtained a verdict in 1965 against a freezing workers' official who had called a stop-work meeting, but since then the employers, too, have given up attempts to prosecute.
The federation of Labour has consistently upheld the right to strike as "the ultimate weapon and the final defence of the workers," to quote the late F. P. Walsh. The National Government, however, has taken a different view, and virtually every piece of industrial legislation in recent years has attempted to impose fur thet shackles on tin union movement The Shipping and Se men Amendment Bill in 1970 included penal clauses which rendered unions and union officials liable to monetary fines and terms of imprisonment. This Act lapsed, though Government members had boasted that they would apply the same penalties to other strike-prone industries, such as the freezing works.
In 1971 another Shipping and Seamen Amendment Bill revived a clause used in the Waterfront Strike Emergency Regulations 20 years earlier by declaring union officials guilty unless they could prove that the offence (such as a strike by their union) had been committed without their knowledge, or that they had done everything in their power to prevent the commission of the offence.
The Stabilisation of Remuneration Act that year made unions liable to fines of up to $1000 and individuals to fines of up to $100, and the Stabilisation of Remuneration Regulations of 1972 raised the maximum fine for individuals to $400 or a prison term not exceeding three months, to which could be added a further fine of $10 a day if the offence was a continuing one. The current Industrial Relations Bill, finally, introduces the new offence of conducting a political strike, for which penalties are provided