A Striking Country

Australia is the world's most striking nation -- in a way that vastly irritates most Australians. In the last three months more than 100,000 workers have walked out in 379 strikes, and there are more than six new work stop pages in Australia every day. No industry is exempt from the strikers' whim. Since March 5, 800 Brisbane butchers have been on strike, and fortnight ago a strike of 2,700 mail sorters piled up 16 million letters and packages in the Sydney post office. Strikes have not only cost workers almost $2,000,000 in wages since 1964 began but have drained union treasuries of other millions in legal fees, strike penalties and member benefits.

A paradoxical reason for the strike orgy is the thriving Australian economy, which produces more than 2,000 new jobs a month but not the 2,000 workers to fill them. The result, says Sydney's Sunday Telegraph, "is the feeling among certain trade unions that full employment provides the excuse for tactics of disruption." In February, 40 boilermakers struck one company because they could not get fish and chips for their Friday lunch, and last month 300 iron workers walked off a job at the Sydney engineering works of Tulloch, Ltd. because management would not unlock a door to save them a 200-yd. walk in the rain.

The strikes put a high price on prosperity for Australian businessmen. A three-day strike by 328 pilots in February cost the Qantas airline $675,000 in revenue, and recent strikes at New South Wales steel plants meant a production loss of 36,000 tons of steel worth $2,250,000. What may repair some of the damage is a new awareness among labor leaders that the situation has got out of hand. Last week moderates in the Australian Council of Trade Unions vetoed a suggestion that the 1,000,000-member Transport Workers Union call a massive transport strike, and Council President Albert E. Monk seems determined to curb as many strikes as he can. But he is just as determined to win a 35-hour work week for the council's 1,200,000 members, who now work 40 hours.

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