Wholesale reductions of wages

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane  July 1, 1893

CAPITAL'S RAID ON WAGES.

Unionism at Bay.

The outlook grows more gloomy every day. First came the wholesale reductions of wages at the hands of private employers; then the Shipowners' Association took up the running; then the Railway Commissioners; and now we have the news of an all-round cut in the earnings of bush workers. In Brisbane, too, to make things worse, the tramway employees have been invited to take into consideration a scheme of readjustment by which as it was at first put forward the men would have been obliged to work for wages varying from somewhere about ten shillings to a pound per week. In other words they would have had to keep their wives and families upon the wages paid to the more fortunate domestic servants, who are “found” and often partially clothed, and still very properly do not consider themselves too well paid.

And here comes the rub. We have all had more or less the idea in the past that wages depended upon what some one or other, it might be ourselves or it might be our employers, thought “a fair thing.” Now for the first time in Australia it is made plain even to stupid people that the labour market is not and never was governed by any consideration of “fairness.” Under a system of industrial competition it must always be ruled by the amount of labour seeking employment and the amount of work waiting to be done. Under a system of competition based upon land monopoly the workers in search of billets will generally be more numerous than the billets which it is possible for them to fill. Thus at the present time wages are falling almost to zero not because it is fair and and reasonable that they should fall, not because the employers are more than usually desirous of bringing them down, but simply and solely because labour, crowed by monopoly out of free opportunity to exert itself, is a mere drug in the market. The men stand between the devil and the deep sea – the devil of monopoly and the ocean of want.

One thing, however, cannot be allowed to pass without comment. The employers themselves are distinctly responsible for whatever “bad blood” is the outcome of the present unhappy situation. Unionism was never less disposed to rise in its stirrups than it is to-day. Unionism is not only in a reasoning frame of mind, but it in eager to approach the discussion of the most unreasonable of proposals in a conciliatory spirit; and better illustration of that could not be had than the letters addressed by Mr. Seymour and Mr. Sam Smith, the secretaries respectively of the Brisbane and Sydney branches of the Seamen's Union, to the Shipowners of those ports asking for the simple concession of a chance to confer. Now it is obvious that if the employers, either of maritime or bush labour, have made up their minds to enforce another reduction the mere holding of a conference would not in itself stand in their way. Indeed, provided they could prove to the men that as things are it is an impossibility to carry on without a reduction, wretched as the new scale of wages is – it amounts in the case of seamen to slightly over threepence an hour – the union, we may rest assured would make a big effort to put up with the loss.

All that, at such a juncture, the shipowners have got to do is to convince the men that it is only by laying up some of their boats, which of course would mean a considerable discharging of hands, or by an all – round reduction of wages that they can keep themselves and their companies afloat. As they do not seem disposed to do that, however, they cannot reasonably complain of any course that may be adopted by the men. We have heard so much about “bad times” from employers in the past.

There is of course another way of looking at the matter. MLA Davis, of Sydney urges the men to stand together. But how is that possible? If they went down in the great conflict of three years ago how doubly certain is failure today. No strike could possibly succeed with the labour market in its present state of glut. And that being so, whatever may be thought of the action of the owners in refusing a conference, whatever may be thought of the necessity for the reduction from an owners' point of view, is it not better for us to consider chiefly the necessities of the case as they are likely to affect ourselves? To abandon the ships just now can cause the owners comparatively little inconveniences. Blackleg labour is ready to their hand. A Union men and more than likely in the temporary disintegration of the union itself.     E. B.