Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 2. 7th March 1973
Penalties never work
Penalties never work
The stubborn persistence with which these repressive measures have been brought forward—contrary to the advice of experienced administrators—supports the belief that the Government is concerned less with industrial harmony than with provoking unrest in the hope of gaining political capital. As this brief historical survey shows, increasingly severe legislation has had no deterrent effect, and at times the introduction of new penalties and restrictions has actually been followed by a rapid increase in the number of strikes.
The futility of using penal sanctions to solve labour disputes was shown in recent confrontations in Australia and Britain and has been pointed out by many enlightened observers.
N. S. Woods, a former Secretary of Labour, wrote that the extraction of penalties was "somewhat incompatible" with the object of restoring a good working relationship, while A. Szakats, the author of the textbook "Trade Unions and the Law," suggested that as our existing penalties for striking were unenforced—"and perhaps unenforceable" — they should be "removed from the statute book and replaced by enactments which command respect and obedience by everybody."
As long ago as 1946, Sir Hartley Shaw cross told the British House of Commons: "You might as well try to bring down a rocket bomb with a peashooter as try to stop a strike by the processes of the criminal law."