Strikes and Rumours of Strikes
It is understandable that the closest attention should be given by the Government to vast claims such as that which the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions now threatens to revive for an additional Li per week for 2,500,000 men. Such a colossal addition to the national wage bill would make nonsense of the attempt to restrain inflation. But it cannot be said that all the labour troubles now pending have so clear a claim to official attention. A common factor in the rest of the disputes which have kept the Minister of Labour from his proposed visit to Italy is that they all involve in some degree quarrels within the trade union movement. It is doubtful whether the Colliery Winders' Federation would have reached the point of threatening to strike on August zoth but for the fact that the National Union of Mineworkers has resisted the claim of this small union of specialists to a separate existence. The lodging turns dispute which again caused some disturbance at York and Grantham last Sunday is mixed up with rival claims by the N.U.R. and the A.S.L.E.F. to the allegiance of the men concerned. Running through the claim of the N.U.R. for a ros. a week increase in pay is a cross-current concerned with the fear of the Confederation of Engineering Unions that the relative position of the railway shop- men will be worsened by such a change. Even the mischief-making of the London Port Workers' Committee—which is the lock-out committee of the recent London stoppage under a new alias—is couched in terms of a breach with the Transport and General Workers' Union. There was a time when the unions kept these internecine struggles to themselves. Now they drag the Minister of Labour and the public as a whole into complex squabbles which even the union officials have difficulty in grasping.. It is not local or sectional differences, but the whole relation between union leaders, members and the Government that is at issue.
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