The Unions Hold Their Fire
For the moment the railwaymen have stopped all strikes and go-slow movements while their unions negotiate with the Railway Executive. But it would be a short-sighted railway-user who thought that this fact gave him any guarantee of an uninterrupted service in the next few months. Nothing is settled. On the very day that the N.U.R. agreed to withdraw its former uncompromising opposition to all lodging turns, the enginemen at York, while abandoning their Sunday strike policy, refused to work services involving lodging turns introduced since May 22nd. And so far the resumed talks on the claim for los. a week plus overtime for Saturday afternoons have not revealed the slightest sign either that the Executive will give way, or that the unions will accept the offer of increases for the lower-paid grades. In the meantime the N.U.R. has given every sign of backing up its general secretary, Mr. J. B. Figgins, to the full. It will be interesting to see whether he shows as much enthusiasm for the new policy, by which opposition to lodging turns is not obligatory, as he did for the old one, under which all lodging }urns were to be opposed. But whatever happens in that matter, the fact remains that any such opposition is completely inconsistent with a policy of improving long-distance services. That is the crux of the matter. If the railwaymen do not have the efficiency of the service in the front of their minds then there will be more and more trouble as the need for efficiency grows—as it is bound to do. The same argument applies elsewhere, and makes nonsense of the sug- gestion of the builders that the claim for a 4o-hour week should be revived and of nearly every one of the accumulating mass of claims from other unions. The fact that the rights and wrongs of these matters do not lie as close to the surface as those of the tireless Communist attempt to involve British dockers in the eternal Canadian seamen's dispute does not make the matter any less serious. The unions are merely holding their fire, and there will be no real industrial peace until they put away their guns.
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