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CHAPTER 11
The Challenge is Accepted

IN the sharpened demands of the new war, employers felt that the nonsense of the 40-hour week must at last be thrown out, along with undue devotion to workers' rights and conditions. Workers, while aware of heightened danger and need, felt that the old enemies, the bosses, were using the crisis to whittle away strong points won by years of union struggle.

The first skirmish occurred at the Dobson coal mine, Greymouth, in the week of Pearl Harbour. Towards the end of 1941 minor stoppages in Westland mines had increased in number, and on 5 December Webb, the Minister of Mines, had said that there must be no go-slow policy, and no stopwork meetings, without permission of management. On the afternoon of Friday 12 December, the Dobson union president asked for a stopwork meeting at 3 pm, a normal hour for such events, to discuss domestic union matters—there was no dispute with management. When this was refused, he called the men out of the mine at 2 o'clock, whereon the mine manager dismissed him and three other union officials for obstructing work.¹ The miners decided not to work until the dismissals were withdrawn, and the backshift did not work on Friday night. During the weekend, after several deputations had failed to change the manager's mind, the Minister ordered that the four men should be reinstated, work resumed, and the miners prosecuted. Summonses were issued for 22 December, but as it was plainly unsuitable, in the Christmas coal crisis, to impose a day's idleness in court, the hearing was postponed. On 6 February, the prosecution explained that the charges were laid as a warning that stoppages would not be tolerated in the mines. The magistrate, G. G. Chisholm,² found that a breach of the regulations was proved, the men having left work without permission, but they had felt that their business justified a meeting, for which they had never previously been refused leave. Management

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was not free from blame: there was no reason why the trouble should have arisen, nor should it have been allowed to go as far as it did. More than a hundred miners were convicted and ordered to come up for sentence if called within twelve months.³

Government had maintained that hours exceeding 40 per week must be paid for at award rates of overtime, except where the Industrial Emergency Council, having been shown that a war-needed industry could not carry such payments, adjusted rates and lengthened hours through labour legislation suspension orders, of which a number had been made. Many existing awards, framed to induce full employment rather than bursts of overtime, provided time-and-a-half rates for the first three hours (or, in some awards, four hours) of overtime in any one week and thereafter double rates, while work on holidays won triple rates. But, with labour scarce and growing scarcer, the government realised that but for these heavy payments, more overtime could be worked. A regulation on 17 December 1941 extended the hours at time-and-a-half, where these had been three in a week, to three in any one day or 12 in any one week. In awards which had previously had four hours' weekly overtime at time-and-a-half rates, this was extended to four hours in any day or 16 in a week. Time worked on any holiday would earn double the ordinary rate. The waterfront and the dairying, gold dredging and shearing industries, which were already working more than 44 hours, were excluded.⁴

To lessen, and where necessary to avoid, the break of routine holidays in the midst of the December crisis, another regulation⁵ provided that no holidays would start till Christmas Day, that all work would resume not later than Monday 5 January and that employers would decide whether any statutory or special holidays, including annual leave, should be kept as such, postponed for up to six months or worked at the full ordinary rate plus holiday pay. To assist in the distribution of goods, in shops where overtime previously was restricted to 60 hours a year, another order (1941/238) allowed up to 120 hours worked otherwise than on the sale of goods.

The overtime and holiday suspension orders pleased employers; they were, said the secretary of an employers' association, ‘a short step in easing award conditions. What we really want now is a general extension of the ordinary hours of work from 40 to 44 or 48 hours, in all industries at ordinary rates of pay for the duration.’⁶ Applied blanket-fashion over all but a few industries, however, the

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regulations produced anomalies. Thus on Christmas and Boxing Days, cool store men at Auckland refused to handle, at double-time rates, the same produce that wharfies were loading at triple rates; they would, said their spokesman, have worked at ordinary, let alone double, pay, but they objected to the discrimination.⁷ Further, in some industries, fixed prices already allowed for certain double and triple time days, and workers were quick to perceive that they were losing extra pay directly to the employers.⁸ Freezing workers at Longburn refused to work on New Year's Day unless the employers paid a day's wages into the War Expenses Account, which they refused to do;⁹ at Makarewa, the men protested against the Minister's interference with awards and declared that the order did not increase production but every holiday worked made a gift of £9,000 to the freezing companies from the workers' wages.¹⁰ Those at Kaiapoi also protested, adding that they would not have done so if the money saved went to Treasury for the war effort or if the order applied to all workers.¹¹ The Auckland Harbour Board Employees Union called it an unjust penalty on the workers, who had a right to know where the cancelled pay was going.¹² Several other Auckland unions, for example, drivers, boilermakers and glassworkers,¹³ and the Auckland Trades Council¹⁴ protested against abrogation of their awards and declared their intention not to work on Anniversary Day, 29 January, except at full award rates. Webb replied that they would be deregistered if they took this stand; there would be no let-up and no compromise; there were proper channels for grievances but work must go on. He also said that men causing trouble would be removed from their industries for the duration, notwithstanding any resolutions passed by local federations dominated by political opponents of the government.¹⁵ However, on 28 January, on the advice of the Industrial Emergency Council, Webb also said that anomalies had been foreseen and would be considered sympathetically; the Auckland unions, after an hour-long address by him, reversed their decision about working on Anniversary Day.¹⁶ By 2 February it was stated¹⁷ that though the order would not be withdrawn, it would be

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administered with due regard to varying conditions, and that the government was unlikely to issue any more blanket orders. Before the end of the month, the Auckland Employers Association urged that the government should make up its mind, speak clearly and insist on obedience, for unions were whittling away the order: drivers, electrical workers, linesmen, radio workers, switch-board and sub-station operators, tramway employees and boilermakers were applying for exemption.¹⁸ Workers in the Wellington City Council's milk department, for instance, had already been exempted retrospectively.¹⁹ In March it was decreed that all men on defence works and all firms supplying essential goods or goods for military purposes, including cement, rubber, woollen goods, leather, sugar, service biscuits, tinned fruit and pickles, should work over the Easter holidays at the rates given by their various awards.²⁰ At the Federation of Labour's Easter conference it was said that the holiday and overtime suspension order had created widespread confusion, and the president, A. McLagan,²¹ attributed this to hasty and badly worded orders made in the rush of Japan's entry, the Crown Law Office not having been properly instructed by the Labour Department; if aggrieved unions had contacted the Federation's national executive, explanations and exemptions could have been made more quickly.²² By late 1942 the order was not generally applicable, about 60 awards having been exempted from it.²³

Meanwhile, on 14 January the government tackled the chaos that was growing as labour sought out the best-paid jobs. Industries concerned with the war effort or services necessary to the community were declared essential; workers could not leave such jobs without consent of the District Manpower Officer and, except in dismissals for serious misconduct, both workers and employers must give seven days' notice of wishing to terminate employment. To control the inflow of labour, the Minister of Labour could specify less essential industries, in which employers had to have Manpower's consent before

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engaging any worker. Further, the Minister could require any specified class of workers, such as those with certain skills or in certain age groups, to register, and these persons could be directed into any job or training. Among the industries first declared essential were those of defence construction, munitions, coal mining, dairy factories, footwear, woollen, knitting and rubber mills, gas and electricity supplies, railways, hospitals, freezing works, flax and linen-flax mills and the timber industry. The list was extended from time to time to include firms engaged even partially on military orders, such as J. J. Melhuish and Co., picklemakers,²⁴ and other industries necessary to the public.²⁵

As the Auckland Star remarked, this was a single giant stride towards the regimentation of people's lives. The manufacturers joined the unions in complaining that they had not been consulted in the framing of these regulations, which probably, said the Press, explained the suspicious and resentful reaction they produced; the purpose was thoroughly justified, but faults and oversights in drafting made the impact more jarring than was necessary.²⁶

To the workers, these arrangements seemed heavily weighted in the employers' favour. The Makarewa freezing workers called for the immediate conscription of wealth, claiming that workers, now fully conscripted, were facing sacrifices and hardship while the dividends of manufacturing and processing concerns had risen to new records.²⁷ The workers' fundamental right to sell their labour to the highest bidder had been swept aside, and it was feared that industries now paying above award rates to secure labour would contrive to reduce pay to award rates. And again there were anomalies: in certain clothing factories which, because they were making uniforms, were declared essential, some of the girls were sewing civilian suits, frocks and underclothing, yet they were anchored to these jobs whereas those doing similar work in factories without war contracts were free to move. The regulations, declared John Roberts,²⁸ secretary of the Clothing Workers Union, were reminiscent of the Middle Ages when farm labour was tied to the job.²⁹ The Auckland Trades Council declared that it would take no part in carrying out these coercive regulations, more likely to produce disunity than co-operation. It advocated the use of production committees and local works councils

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similar to those in the United States, with labour and management equally represented under a government chairman.³⁰

In short, these regulations, plus December's holidays and overtime orders and the powers taken by the Attorney-General in September 1940 to exclude from industry and unions persons likely to cause dissent, pressed against rights regarded as basic by organised labour. The men felt that the government had given them over to the bosses in the name of the war; if they could neither strike nor leave the job, every grievance could be ignored.

With this background of resentment, there began immediately the first of three strikes in the meatworks of Auckland. The petrol restrictions of December 1941 had caused the transport company serving the Westfield area, where transport was already over-loaded, to lay off four of the twelve petrol buses used at peak hours, while those men who previously had gone to work in groups by car now lengthened the bus queues. Freezing workers started very early in the morning, many in gangs where the lateness of one man upset the rest, and they finished at varying hours in the afternoon. Some men who knocked off at about 4.30 pm claimed they were not getting home till 7. Representations had been made since 17 December to the local traffic licensing authority, which had recommended to headquarters at Wellington that unless the train service could be altered to fit Westfield needs, something would have to be done, including the granting of petrol to private cars for group transport of men living beyond the ordinary service routes.

But nothing had been done by noon on Thursday 15 January 1942, when more than 100 mutton slaughtermen at the Westfield works ceased killing and said that they would not start again till transport was improved. The bus company's petrol was at once restored, making some improvement, and work was resumed on 16 January, but there was loud outcry from some quarters. This stoppage, declared the New Zealand Herald of 16 January, was an immediate test of the essential industry regulations brought in barely two days earlier. Would they be enforced or would the government weakly follow its past practice of overlooking industrial offences committed by workers? ‘It must enforce industrial discipline as strictly as military discipline—or abdicate.’ The Herald deplored that the government had begun with appeasement, meekly increasing petrol for buses and talking of petrol for workers' cars. Holland telegraphed Fraser that the Auckland province was seething with indignation.

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When farmers and townspeople had met with extreme inconvenience and financial loss from lack of petrol, to give in to illegal strikers was to put a premium on lawlessness and a penalty on patriotism. Fraser should hasten to Auckland and tell the lawbreakers once and for all that the government and not the freezing workers was going to run New Zealand.³¹

Webb, as Minister of Labour, announced that legal proceedings would be taken against those in the hold-up, that if their union supported them it would be de-registered, and that unless the men resumed normal work they would be excluded from the industry for the duration.³² Letters in the Herald explained that slaughter work was arduous and unpleasant; others pointed out that a soldier's job was arduous, unpleasant and long, a soldier never got home to dinner, and killing Germans was much more dangerous than killing lambs. Transport was still inadequate, and the Westfield men said that if it could not be improved they would have to cease work daily at an earlier hour; this, they said, was not a threat or an ultimatum, and would not be rushed into.³³

On 16 January Scholefield, journalist and historian, recorded his bewildered reactions to militant unionism in wartime crises:

With the best will in the world towards my own class, the workers, I find it hard to understand how any body of men who know anything of the history of the working class movement can use the war to behave as many of them are doing. To-day there is another strike at the Westfield freezing works, on account, it is said, of the overcrowding of buses in which the men are taken to and from work. They surely cannot be ignorant of the overcrowding of trams and buses in which working girls in the towns and people of all classes are now travelling every day of their life. If there is a better explanation of their conduct they should urgently state their case before the public, otherwise labour will not have a friend left outside the trades unionists when the war is over. Immediately following this strike, slaughtermen in the Auckland city abattoirs struck for higher wages for abattoir assistants and labourers.

That the malady is not universal is evident from the output of coal in 1941…. The public should be fully informed of what labour is doing and what hours are being worked.³⁴

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At the same time, another stoppage was not reported in the papers or recorded in the Labour Department's MS Register of Strikes, but appeared later in the annual report of the Department of Labour. Boners of the Westfield Freezing Company ceased work on 16 January alleging that carcases were not thawed sufficiently. Court proceedings against 14 men were begun but withdrawn ‘as the employer had apparently not made it clear to the workers that they were expected to continue with the work.’³⁵

Also on 16 January, butchers at the Auckland city abattoirs ceased work, alleging that, because the City Council refused to pay abattoir labourers above the award rate of 2s 7d an hour, they could not get sufficient men to avoid excessive overtime and strain on the labourers whose cleaning work necessarily continued some hours after slaughtering ceased. For the first three days of the next week the butchers did not kill after 2.30 pm, but on Thursday, when asked again by management, promised normal work. Immediately, seven labourers gave one hour's notice, as they were entitled to do, meat killing for local use not being an essential industry. Management, saying that the situation was farcical, closed the abattoirs at 11 am, and they remained closed on Friday. Over the weekend, the National Service Department ordered the men to return to work and they did so. The abattoir section of the union was de-registered and the work declared essential.³⁶

Webb at Westfield on 27 January spoke strongly of New Zealand's danger, of slavery under Japanese tyrants and children learning a foreign language at school. Extolling Russia's fight, he said that the half-baked Communists who were denouncing the government were ‘just wreckers and ratbags’ who would not last 24 hours in Russia and whose real work for the Labour movement could be written on a tram ticket. No stupid action would be allowed to jeopardise the Labour government, which had done so much for the workers. For the transport problem, a main complaint, Webb promised remedy; other speakers however berated the government for listening to the national executive of the Federation of Labour, not to the rank and file, for having two Hotel Workers Union members on the Industrial Emergency Council but none from the freezing industry, and for

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abrogating industrial awards by reducing holiday pay, seen as a gift to employers. On this last point, when asked what happened to the wages lost, and whether employers were required to hand the money over to the government, Webb was reported as saying, ‘It may go to help pay old age pensions and other social benefits we have given to the people’. After loud cries of dissent had subsided he said that he was against any employer making money out of the war but the question was not so simple of solution as some people seemed to think.³⁷ It was hardly an agile reply, and the Evening Post helpfully sought to improve it by explaining that ending penal overtime rates checked inflation.

On 27 January, Amendment No 1 to the Strike and Lockout Emergency Regulations 1939 provided that any person who had offended or should hereafter offend could be imprisoned for up to three months or fined up to £50 or, if a body corporate, up to £200. Next day, with the stated purpose of upholding the law and the regulations, 43 men from the Auckland abattoirs were prosecuted for partial discontinuance work. The magistrate, J. H. Luxford, said that certain peacetime rights had to be thrown overboard, including the right to sell one's labour to the highest bidder, for in the present labour shortage adherence to this principle became exploitation. Having regard to the sudden change into a state of emergency, he would not fine or imprison; the defendants were ordered to come up for sentence if called within 12 months; they would not be called if they worked in a proper spirit and manner, but any more breaches would mean prison.³⁸

Next day, 29 January, 63 mutton slaughtermen from Westfield met the same charge and the same penalty, as did a further 53 a few days later. Luxford said, however, that with men working long hours and living over a wide area, transport was of utmost importance in running an essential industry. ‘The sudden imposition of blanket petrol restrictions without making proper provision for the essential workers seems to me to show that some restrictions are being brought in without full appreciation of the situation’; but the men had spoilt an unanswerable case by taking direct action.³⁹

The men might have said that only direct action had brought their unanswerable case to light. Even as they were in court, a committee was looking into the complex problem of Westfield transport, which Sir Ernest Davis, the former Mayor of Auckland, said was an absolute scandal, utterly unfair to the workers. Westfield was an

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industrial area, without nearby houses, and its industries were expanding much faster than was transport. At the Westfield Freezing Works alone there were 1850 men, fifty per cent more than in the previous year, and a further increase to 2400 was expected.⁴⁰

In March, W. T. Anderton,⁴¹ a slightly leftist Labour member of Parliament, criticising lack of co-operation and co-ordination between certain departments and ministers, said that such a lack between the departments of Transport and of Labour had caused the first Westfield strike, which would never have happened if the Transport Department had acted before, rather than after, the strike.⁴² It was decided to make the railway timetable more useful, two transport companies offered to lend extra buses for the rush hours, and a permanent committee would arrange details and watch for future problems.⁴³

That problems persisted was evidenced by a later court case. On 5 March a wearied Westfield cannery worker, when denied entrance to three successive buses, struck the driver and used indecent language. She was fined 10s on each count and 13s 4d costs, though the magistrate, J. Morling, bore in mind that she ‘was working for her livelihood and had lost her head.’⁴⁴

During February and early March, the Labour Department's MS Register of Strikes recorded several minor stoppages at Auckland meatworks. On 5 February, 15 men ceased work for one and three-quarter hours over inadequate means of sending out boned meat, and better methods were adopted; on 20 February, the lunch interval of 162 men was prolonged three-quarters of an hour over ‘several matters in dispute’, on which no concession was made; on 6 and 12 March, 100 men stopped for one and one-and-a-half hours, discussing grievances over the manning of the mutton killing floor; on 13 March, 13 labourers in the pig killing area made similar objecttions for three hours, to all of which no concessions were made. At Hellaby's, on 28 February, 47 slaughtermen ceased work for four hours because they were not supplied with knives to which they were entitled but which were hard to obtain, and on 9 March, 18 boners struck for five hours over too cold meat.

But in mid-March Westfield discontent produced a more formidable strike. At Hellaby's, which worked mainly for the retail trade, there had been since 1933 a small union covering workers

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engaged in preserving meat.⁴⁵ The much larger Auckland Freezing Workers Union,⁴⁶ to which 350 of Hellaby's male staff belonged, regarded it as a bosses' union, had tried to have it de-registered, and was currently suing the firm for arrears of wages due under the freezing workers award.⁴⁷ In February, the canning department at Hellaby's was extended and women were hired to work on service contracts. These women were told by management that they must join a union and the appropriate one was Hellaby's. Hearing of this, officials of the larger union asked the company for a lunch-time meeting with the women to suggest that they should instead join the Auckland Freezing Workers Union. The company, not wanting the women to be disturbed by contact with a troublesome union, refused. Thereupon 329 of Hellaby's members of the Auckland Union held a meeting and, claiming that the company was interfering with the rights of workers to run union affairs and decide which union they would join, ceased work on the afternoon of Thursday 12 March.⁴⁸

The strike spread to 2320 men. On Monday afternoon 16 March, 1595 members of the Auckland Freezing Workers Union employed at the Westfield Freezing Company ceased work in support of Hellaby's men; they were joined on the 17th by 307 men at the Southdown works of the Auckland Farmers Freezing Company, 73 men from this Company's cool store at Kings Wharf, and on the 18th by 16 bacon-workers at Hellaby's.⁴⁹

In the generally expressed view, this was selfish action on a trivial matter when the war situation called for national effort, unity and sacrifice. Webb said immediately that it was unpardonable and treasonable, there would be legal action against those responsible and they might also be expelled from the industry. Indignation rose rapidly. The Mayor of Dunedin said it made one hang one's head in shame.⁵⁰ The Press spoke of wantonness and said that Webb should put his hat on and take his gloves off.⁵¹ The New Zealand Herald said that the merits of the original dispute had become irrelevant to the main issue, which was a challenge to the government

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and all authority, a stab in the back of the country which was entitled in the present crisis to the services of all citizens without conditions or thought of self. ‘It is for the Government to step in to show by firm decisive action that this form of national sabotage must end. It has the power. Let it be used.’⁵² The Evening Post said that the government could prevent the strikers from obtaining other work and expel trouble-makers from the industry and would have the united support of the country in doing so.⁵³ Hawke's Bay farmers declared that ‘the offenders should be drafted automatically into the military forces for suitable duties, where they would be subject to military discipline and pay.’⁵⁴ The Dominion wanted to know what ‘proceedings’ Webb proposed against the strikers: ‘Are they, or their ring leaders, to be fined a pound or two, and then invited or drafted into other work? If not—if at long last there is to be an end to meaningless finger-wagging and humiliating “appeals” to aggressive and irresponsible agitators—why does Mr Webb … not say plainly what is in store for the men he accuses of treason, and follow the word by the deed?’⁵⁵

The Prime Minister on 17 March called for volunteers, both men and women, to cope with the thousands of animals already at the works or en route, and to continue canning for overseas orders. This was a step far from automatic for a leader risen from Labour ranks where ‘scab’ was a very dirty word. Several hundred men came forward, to be organised and led by the freezing companies' office staffs augmented from other works. Some were farmers,⁵⁶ but many came from the city, their hands showing that they were not usually manual workers; the majority were middle-aged, ‘and a number were undoubtedly emerging from retirement’.⁵⁷

Most of Hellaby's cannery girls, the occasion if not the cause of all the tumult, were still working,⁵⁸ but Westfield had a much larger cannery, working on overseas orders, and 150 volunteer women were engaged there on 18 March.⁵⁹ Although youth and modernity were attested by a number arriving in slacks, the majority were middle-aged, obviously housewives in comfortable circumstances, most from Remuera, St Heliers, Epsom and Parnell, reported the Auckland Star. Many were well known in the city, having served on patriotic

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bodies and the committees of such organisations as the Victoria League and the Plunket Society; one such declared she would ‘stick it’ no matter what she had to do.⁶⁰ More than 20 of the regular girls and about 30 men who disagreed with the strike showed the newcomers what to do.⁶¹

On the afternoon of 18 March the strike was declared over: the men would resume work while the Federation of Labour would bring the issue at Hellaby's before a tribunal. Next day work went smoothly at the cool stores and the Southdown works, where there was stock available, but at Hellaby's and at Westfield men were told that as stock supplies were interrupted and volunteers were on the job, they could not all be taken on at once, and it was made clear that some, including union officials, would never be taken on. Claiming that this was victimisation, some 1700 men remained on strike.

On Friday 20 March, more than 80 Westfield men who had already received suspended sentences for the earlier disturbance and who had also taken part in the stop-work meeting of 6 March, were sent to prison for a month, while six who had merely taken part in the meeting were fined £2 and costs.⁶² Their counsel, W. R. Tuck,

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anxious to put their case fairly while avoiding statements likely to be provocative or to cause bitterness, explained that in the present issue two unionist principles were involved: firstly, the workers' right to choose and develop their own union organisation free from the employers' influence; secondly, if any members were penalised for union activity their fellow-workers considered themselves equally concerned and equally liable. They were not merely supporting comrades; ‘The union was the union of all the workers in all the works and the principle involved was one of equal importance to all the workers. That, sir, is the explanation of the action taken.’⁶³ Luxford, imposing sentence, told the men that in defying the law, the government and public opinion, they were running against an impenetrable barrier, nor should they flatter themselves that there was safety in numbers, that a real penalty could not be enforced. He also stated, as a fundamental principle, which should be understood by every citizen, that the government must see that workers in essential industries got a ‘fair go’; an employer would not be allowed to exploit the Strike and Lockout Emergency Regulations of 1939; the controller of an essential industry was now a trustee for the whole community, and must subordinate all other considerations.⁶⁴

Fraser, informed of this sentence in the House, said, ‘I do not want to see men punished; but I would sooner punish any number of men than betray the country, at the present moment’. Referring also to watersiders who had stopped loading a ship that morning in weather merely damp, he said that this sort of thing was stabbing the country in the back and he could endure no more of it. He called on every decent-thinking person to support the government in whatever action it took; ‘If the Government cannot take strong enough action by the ordinary process of the Civil law, then other methods may have to be contemplated’. Also, if as Prime Minister he could not get better support from the industrial workers, it was his clear duty to step down altogether. He would not endeavour to form a government behind the backs or opposed to the wishes of those with whom he had been associated; he would step down and ‘let those who can carry on, do so.’⁶⁵

This was not to be Fraser's last threat of resignation, but it was the first, and it had considerable impact. The Press, however, looked into the whole statement coolly. ‘Admiration and sympathy for the Prime Minister, and relief that some member of the Government is at last being honest about a situation that has most New Zealanders

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badly worried, must not obscure the fact that what he said leaves the situation much as it was.’ The force of his threat of ‘other methods’ was weakened by his further threat to resign. ‘To tell the industrial workers at one moment that he may use force to bring discipline into industry and at another that he will resign if he does not get their support is to be dangerously inconsistent. The industrial workers may well feel that the outcome of another strike may be nothing worse than Mr Fraser's resignation and the formation of another Labour Government.’ Mr Fraser, concluded the Press, ‘is the coolest and wisest man in New Zealand political life and the best informed about the war situation. If he could speak and act according to his convictions the few dissenting voices would be drowned by the approval of a nation which in frustration and bewilderment has waited long enough for a leader.’⁶⁶

On Monday 23 March there were ‘unprecedented scenes’ in the concert chamber of Auckland's Town Hall: the day-long mass trial of more than 300 Hellaby strikers. Appearing for most of them Tuck, although somewhat apologetic, submitted that an intransigent employer had peremptorily and unnecessarily rebuffed the workers. He pleaded again the vital union principle that workers' unions should be free of employers' influence and brought out that management at both Hellaby's and Westfield intended to exclude some men permanently. Luxford remarked that, without adjudication by the Manpower authorities, the last would offend against essential industry regulations, and was surprised that machinery for quick settlement of disputes did not exist or had not been pressed into action. He found that the employers had kept within the law while the workers had gone outside it, and said that while listening to counsel a paraphrase of a passage from Holy Writ went through his mind: ‘What does it matter if we lose every principle for which trade unionism has fought if we lose the war while doing so?’ New Zealand, with all its legislation for social justice, in the hour of direct threat was distracted by a serious dispute ‘which has caused the Prime Minister to make the unprecedented, I might say terrible, intimation that, if the civil law does not function, another law will. Are we to be the first unit of the British Commonwealth to say that our civil law is unable to function?’⁶⁷

The Crown prosecutor, late in proceedings, had announced that he had just received instructions from the Crown: the men realised the gravity of their action, they would not repeat it, and a severe penalty was not called for. Behind these instructions one may sense

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the conversations of ministers who foresaw the awkwardness of having more than 300 essential workers in prison, but the magistrate had no such misgivings: he declared that his duty was clear and it would be performed fearlessly. Charges against 116 men had been withdrawn or adjourned, about 30 who had returned to work were fined £2, and 213 were sentenced to a month in prison.

It was then 4 o'clock, and the men were told to wait. In the hall, stuffy with its blackout devices and the big crowd, there were cries for air and water. Some men with pencils and paper hastily supplied by the union secretary wrote letters to their families, which were sent off, even by taxi. At about 6 o'clock a police officer announced that as it was not possible to accommodate them all in prison that night they should go to their homes, pledged to present themselves to work out their sentences when called on. In groups of seven they signed this pledge and were despatched homeward in all available conveyances, again including taxis. Thus in something like a burlesque the unprecedented scenes ended, at about 7 o'clock.⁶⁸ Meanwhile 1700 men were still on strike.

Hearty good humour in both prisoners and police marked the next act, two days later, when those sentenced assembled at the central police station, and police vans, plus a couple of postal vans, carried them off to prison in batches of 10, each cheered by those remaining, the process taking several hours.⁶⁹

That same day, 25 March, the strike was ended, with the employers agreeing to take on all the men without discrimination within a fortnight as stock came forward and volunters diminished. Meanwhile the Federation of Labour pointed out, and the employers confirmed, the impossibility of full production minus many skilled men. With the strike thus settled, the men were ready, said Tuck, to return to work and faithfully discharge their duties to the industry. The Department of Justice considered use of the Royal Prerogative, but on Luxford's advice it was decided to re-consider the sentences by way of rehearing. The men, including the 80 imprisoned earlier, were released, to come up for sentence if called within a year.⁷⁰

‘They marched the strikers into gaol and marched them out again. So ends an incident that savours not a little of comic opera’,⁷¹ wrote R. M. Algie,⁷² and many agreed with him. Less prominent, and less

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comic from the unionist viewpoint, was the striking out or dismissal of more than 100 appeals for Auckland freezing workers against Territorial service.⁷³ But while many heads were shaken over government softness to militant unions, the workers took another view. A few union resolutions appeared,⁷⁴ charging the government with harshness to the freezing workers, and the conference of the Federation of Labour criticised the government's handling of the dispute. One speaker, F. G. Young MLC,⁷⁵ said that the Auckland Trades Council believed that had the government been firmer at the start there would have been no need for volunteer labour or court action. If the government put the boot into workers, it should also put the boot into employers when they deserved it; the employers, placed in a strong position, had abused their strength. ‘It is felt in Auckland that the Government is loath to tackle the big employers’, and had let the workers down.⁷⁶ The workers, however, with government support, prevailed in one area: very quietly, at the end of June, Hellaby's union, the last of the company unions, applied for deregistration and was gazetted out of existence.⁷⁷

Something of the hostility shown towards those who worked during the strike was revealed at a Manpower appeal in May. The Westfield manager said that lockers were broken into, clothes damaged or destroyed, and meat was thrown at these men, while others jeered. This was dangerous as men with sharp knives in their hands could cut themselves, and there was risk of hot tempers leading to serious incidents. Some men thus persecuted had sought to leave the works, but the trouble was now much diminished.⁷⁸

The perplexity of an alert observer amid these conflicts was set forth by the editor of the New Zealand Woman's Weekly:

I do not hold a brief for any of the parties concerned, Government, employers or strikers. I know too little of the inside story, of what had gone on behind the scenes. Can it be a tussle between Labour bosses and the Government? Is it a skirmish for power, or for true principles of democracy…. ‘Depriving our boys overseas of food’ and such-like statements did not cut ice as far as I

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was concerned, for … I found simultaneously with the accusations against the strikers, statements about the problem of surplus meat…. We want a united nation, want it more than anything else, not class struggle. In order to create this unity we want clear facts for cool, unbiassed and reasoned judgment. We want both sides of the story. Much better reasons could be found to explain why strikes could and should not be tolerated in these days than the reasons given.

The writer pondered on overseas pressures: ‘We need supplies. We need to be included in the general defence programme. In order to be included we have to do our bit and do it well. This Government must see that things are run to time-table, that ships are not delayed. We are only a small pawn in a great game.’ People who wrote to the papers saying that the 40-hour week must go did not know what they were talking about, continued this vigorous lady. To many workers the 40-hour week was becoming nominal, and many were on piece-work. ‘Girls in factories could enlighten the public on this subject. They claim that the “song of the shirt” is coming into its own again. Piece-work, of course, speeds up production, but it is a wrong system and saps the vitality of all workers’; generations had fought against it. For such reasons workers became suspicious, began to doubt whether the war was worth fighting. ‘It is all very complicated and very confusing.’⁷⁹

Twice more in March the government took legal action against strikers. On 20 March, at the height of the Westfield affair, there was very minor newspaper interest in a strike trial at Hamilton. On 3 March, 38 carpenters working on a cool store at Horotiu, objecting to a man they disliked being made foreman, left in a body. They were paid off, their employment terminated,⁸⁰ and were away nearly two weeks. Their counsel, T. Henry,⁸¹ said that they had not realised they were breaking the regulations, they had returned to the job and, with the cause of the dispute removed, were working harmoniously. They were convicted and ordered to come up for sentence if called within a year.⁸²

Another strike threat which had a background conflict with the Minister of Labour was finally cancelled. Early in February a committee was appointed to examine a dispute at Borthwick's Belfast establishment, concerning the re-employment of one man and pay-

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ment of chain workers. The workers' representatives were John Henry, Thomas Martin and R. A. Brookes.⁸³ On 25, 26 and 27 February 1942, 76 butchers had prolonged stop-work meetings on these topics, and on 5 March another meeting refused to promise the Minister of Labour that there would be no further stoppages.⁸⁴ That same day Webb reduced the dispute committee to two representatives from each side and changed the workers' representatives to A. McLagan and F. P. Walsh, both powerful union men close to the government. Rapid Supreme Court action produced a writ of prohibition against this new tribunal, preventing it from sitting, but a meeting of Walsh and McLagan with the employers' representatives reached agreement.⁸⁵ Immediately Webb instructed that the 76 butchers should be prosecuted for illegal strikes during the meetings of 25, 26 and 27 February.⁸⁶ The charges were to be heard on 25 March, but on the 24th, just after the Westfield trial comedy, it was known that the Crown would withdraw the charges,⁸⁷ and they were withdrawn without comment the next day.

In the first quarter of 1942 there were 37 industrial disputes, losing 28 068 working days. This was far more than in the same period of 1941 (8851 days lost) when the war situation had been much less ominous. Only in two cases (at the Auckland cool stores and at Longburn on New Year's Day) were strikes in direct response to the emergency regulations of December and January. The reasons listed in the Labour Department's MS Register of Strikes were as various as usual.⁸⁸

There was broad acceptance of less pay, more work and loss of freedom to move from job to job. Grumbles were silenced in people's minds, in talk and in public places, by awareness that such sacrifices were little against what the boys overseas were giving and taking. Essential work restrictions, which so closely resembled conscription, met less overt resistance than did the regulations reducing holiday overtime rates. There was also awareness that the enemies were at

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the gate: the Japanese were uncomfortably close, while Russia desperately needed all help of any sort in the common struggle; the Communist party, normally an automatic supporter of industrial strife, now opposed it, constantly advocating works councils and efficiency committees instead.

On the other hand, the resistance to the cheapening of overtime, the protest, albeit modest, at the immobilising of essential labour,⁸⁹ and such incidents as Webb's reception at Westfield⁹⁰ indicate a ground swell of resentment that the government had seemingly sold the Labour pass, given the advantage to the employers. This strengthened both rigid union loyalty and union resolution to assert its strength against the encroachments of war-backed bosses, workers being fully aware of the heightened value of their labour. Strikes are rarely planned; they happen, often from tangential pressures, in a maelstrom of conflicting reactions, personalities, interests and loyalties, in which ‘striking it out’ often seems the only course. It was almost predictable that the impact of restrictive labour regulations in December–January 1941–2⁹¹ would be marked by some industrial clash. The meatworks, traditionally a fighting edge of unionism, were a likely place for it, especially as the job itself, always unpleasant, was made worse by pressure of work and expanding work-forces, and, particularly at Westfield, irritated by bad transport.

Of the 28 068 days lost from 1 January to 31 March 1942, the 20 strikes at freezing works accounted for 25 366 days. In the mines, nine disputes cost 1502 days; ships and the waterfront lost 929 days, largely in one half-day strike by 1789 Wellington watersiders, and 271 lost days were shared by sawmillers and builders.

Between April and June industrial disputes were few: the meatworkers added a mere 46 lost work-days, and five mine disputes cost 1718 work days, together making 1764 lost during that quarter, and 29 832 in all during the half-year. Through the next three months, apart from the massive 20 826 days lost in the coal mines, mainly during September in the Waikato, only 60 working days were lost over the whole industrial field, making the sum for nine months 50 718 work-days. In the last quarter, seven scattered minor

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strikes added 718 days, making the year's total 51 436 work-days lost.⁹²

After the meatworks explosion early in 1942 there was industrial quiet for several months, while the Japanese pushed into New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and Manpower authorities tried to meet the needs of essential industry and services by directing men and women into jobs. But in the coal mines another area of turbulence was arising, produced by many factors, not least of which was chronic ill-will between men and management.

Coal supplies were short. There were some 140 mines widespread about New Zealand, some producing thousands of tons annually, some only a few score; fewer than 40 were sizeable. Most were privately operated, some on freehold land, some on land leased from the Crown. On a State coal reserve near Greymouth some 150 to 170 men worked about 19 small co-operative mines, with government blessing and technical advice, in all producing less than 90 000 tons annually. There were, by 1942, six State mines; three of them, the James, Liverpool and Strongman in the Grey valley, had from their starts been developed by the State, which had also taken over several mines when these became unprofitable for their owners to operate: Mangapehi and Tatu in the North Island during 1940 and, in July 1941, Blackball in the Grey area. Two other South Island mines, Dobson and Wallsend, were taken over in February 1943.⁹³ By the end of the war 11 underground and 8 opencast mines were operated by the State.⁹⁴

For stabilisation purposes, coal production was subsidised. In May 1940, to meet increased wages and other costs, the government granted mine owners a subsidy of 1s 6d a ton, and two years later further subsidies were awarded, ranging from 6d to 2s 7d a ton, according to situation and costs of production.⁹⁵

Imports of bituminous, gas-producing coal from Australia were reduced from 111 537 tons in 1939 to 37 352 in 1943 and nil in 1944 and 1945. Locomotives, which preferred bituminous coals,

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needed more of the brown and lignite types. Railway traffic had increased: apart from moving troops and their supplies, railways were carrying passengers and goods that formerly went by road, and were making extra hauls so that ships need call at fewer ports. Locomotives consumed 484 423 tons in 1939, 492 456 in 1940, 528 552 in 1941, 537 732 in 1942, 611 841 in 1943, 634 007 in 1944 and 576 926 in 1945.⁹⁶

Expanding industries used more coal, and there were particular difficulties over gas-making, as many retorts were designed for bituminous coal and could not use the lower grades that were abundant locally. Pre-war, railways were using about 500 000 tons of coal, coastal shipping 100 000, gas-works about 250 000, factories 700 000 and households 850 000 tons.⁹⁷ In the 1939–40 year, 885 022 tons of coal were used in factory industries: gas making took 27 per cent of this total, with dairy products, meat freezing, lime and cement making, the three main industries, taking 41 per cent. Wartime increases may be tabulated from Yearbook figures, allowing for some gaps where classifications change:⁹⁸

Two steam electricity generating stations, one at Evans Bay, Wellington, one at Kings Wharf, Auckland, were working hard to meet extra demands for electricity. Military camps were using large quantities of coal. In houses and in schools open fires were still the most usual form of heating and coal stoves were not uncommon, while shortage of wood cutters had made firewood scarce. The prudent householder tried to buy in advance of need, thus spreading demand: for example, deliveries of domestic coal from Wellington and Christchurch depots rose from 6486 tons in January–April 1939 to 12 581 tons during those months in 1940.⁹⁹

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During the winter of 1942, domestic coal was acutely short, particularly in the Auckland area, with some householders burning every available fruitbox and bit of timber and boiling the wash-copper with old magazines and newspapers.¹⁰⁰ Anyone faced with a cold grate, or even the threat of it, was ready to criticise recalcitrant miners, immune from military service, who withheld their labour on trivial pretexts, depriving citizens of a basic comfort besides damaging the war effort, industry and all those dependent on rail transport.

Although mining was more or less a reserved occupation, there were not enough miners. They increased during the war by only a few hundred, with few additions underground. In 1942, 3659 underground men produced a peak 717 tons per man, whereas 3542 had produced 648 tons per man in 1939; in 1945, when opencast mining had substantially increased, there were 3932 men underground and a total of 5592 employed in mines, whereas the total for 1939 was 4762 and 4997 in 1942. By May 1940, 167 had left as volunteers¹⁰¹ and though thereafter underground workers were appealed for, the Mining Controller¹⁰² remarked early in 1941 that military service was the principal reason for the shortage of miners, and ‘the idea that men would rush mining jobs to escape military service was proved to be a bogey.’¹⁰³ Others left for more congenial jobs¹⁰⁴ before mining was declared an essential industry in January 1942. At the end of March 1942 Webb spoke of withdrawing 300 miners from the Army but, though War Cabinet's approval was announced in mid-June,¹⁰⁵ soldiers were not actually released till more than a month later.¹⁰⁶ Meanwhile the manager of Brunner Collieries told an appeal board, ‘Twenty men want to go, and two of them are trying to loaf their way into the Army.’¹⁰⁷ Mines were not favoured as funk-holes.

Coal miners had a sustained reputation for strikes. Of 1939's 66 industrial disputes, costing 53 801 working days, there were 29 strikes and 21 439 days lost in the mines; shipping and cargo-working followed closely, with 20 864 days lost during 9 strikes. In

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1940, when all strikes were reduced to 56, with only 28 097 days lost, coal miners led the field with 13 strikes costing 11 375 days.¹⁰⁸ In 1941, out of 89 strikes totalling 26 237 days (that is, 1860 fewer than in 1940) miners lost 11 569 days in 43 strikes. In 1942, out of 65 strikes costing 51 189 days, miners in 24 strikes contributed 24 450 lost days, second only to freezing workers, who in their 24 strikes lost 25 227 days.¹⁰⁹

Behind these figures lay the work itself, dark, dirty, dangerous, breeding a separateness within the general community, and intensely cohesive unionism, fed by awareness that every advance in wages and conditions had been won by union pressure. This awareness reached out in time and distance, from dingy Durham and the bitter valleys of Wales, and from New Zealand's own Depression when 1500 men were driven from the industry, although miners themselves had been willing to share the job with their mates, working day and week about at no extra cost to the employers.¹¹⁰

The attitude of British miners grew from long experience of class warfare, ‘conducted in most areas in geographical isolation from less strenuous industries and blander ways of life…. Against the crudest exploitation known in British industry the miners had erected unions of legendary solidarity.’¹¹¹ Many New Zealand miners or their fathers had begun work in British pits, they brought traditional attitudes with them and they continued to live in isolated grim little towns whose sole reason for existence was the mine. The feeling that they had enemies far closer than Hitler or Tojo¹¹² was widespread. The

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preamble of the rules and constitution of the United Mine Workers of New Zealand read:

We hold that there is a class struggle in society and that the struggle is caused by the capitalist class owning the means of production to which the working class must have access in order to live. The working class produces all value. The greater the share the capitalist class appropriates, the less remains for the working class; therefore, the interests of these two classes are in constant conflict.

There can be no peace so long as want and hunger are found among millions of working people whilst the minority who constitute the employing class have all the good things of life. Between these two classes the struggle must continue until capitalism is abolished and is replaced by a system of social ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Long experience has proved the futility of those political and industrial methods which aim only at mending and rendering tolerable, and thereby perpetuating, capitalism, instead of ending it….¹¹³

Since the start of the war, miners had been under fire. Editorials and reports on stoppages not infrequently referred to past as well as to current errors, strengthening the troublesome image; notably an article in the New Zealand Herald, 18 June 1941, repeated in other papers, summarised nearly 50 stoppages since the war's start, concluding, ‘Such facts speak for themselves and indicate how wide is the opportunity for greater production by eliminating frivolous and irresponsible stoppages of work.’ ‘Mine Idle’ was a frequent heading, though the actual news might be of flooding¹¹⁴ or safety measures¹¹⁵ or of full bins and delays in shipping.¹¹⁶ Often, the reports were of strikes over the suspension or dismissal of one or two men;¹¹⁷ over transport;¹¹⁸ over pay claims for heat,¹¹⁹ or for distance of the coalface from the mine mouth;¹²⁰ for machine-cut coal;¹²¹ over cavils (the

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miners' three-monthly ballots for working places) and mistakes in them¹²² or because miners would not walk a quarter-mile in rain from the bath-house to the mine¹²³ or because the clothes of a few rope boys were wet because the bath-house was too cold to dry them.¹²⁴

Idle Coal Mines, More Time Lost' deplored the New Zealand Herald and other papers on 6 December 1941, listing reasons why more than 600 men in five Grey district mines had lost a Friday's work: at the Liverpool and Blackball mines the bins were full; the Wallsend miners, after a normal stop-work meeting, left for the funeral of a drowned trucker; at the Dobson, some men who had ‘gone slow’ for the past month were refused lamps (ie, suspended) and all the men returned home in sympathy; at the Paparoa, a pair of miners complained about the condition of a working place, the men discussed the dispute and they all went home.

Such multiple idleness was unusual; more often it involved only one or two mines at a time, and quite often work stopped for only one day. For instance, the State Mines Union had a resolution on its books that if there were no transport home for the wet-time men (who worked a 6-hour shift finishing about 2 pm), the mine would not work the following day. On 26 May 1941, when the Railways did not provide the usual train, 38 wet-time men from the Liverpool mine waited in heavy rain for the general mine train at 4.35 pm in a small unheated room and empty railway carriages. Next day, the Strongman, James and Liverpool miners, 500 of them, did not work, the Union stating that direct action was the method most likely to get grievances rectified as other means did not bring satisfaction.¹²⁵

That statement touches the crux: strikes brought the miners into disrepute, but they got results, from a railway train to a pay adjustment. Mere complaints frequently brought nothing at all, and negotiations with work proceeding could take a long time, for why should management hasten towards any concession while production continued? This is the point usually invisible to the public and tediously clear to the workers. As an instance: on 28 April 1941, while the New Zealand Division was ending its rearguard action in Greece, 198 men at the MacDonald mine, Huntly, demanding 6d a ton more for machine-cut coal, ceased work. They had given 14 days' notice of this intention but there had been no discussions between their representatives and the owners.¹²⁶ The strike lasted six days,

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producing a crop of indignant editorials against the miners, the government, and Webb. ‘For this intolerable position the Government is directly to blame…. This is no time to discuss the merits of the present case. The men may have some justification for their claims…. The one primary consideration, however, is that production should proceed without interruption.’¹²⁷ At length the men went back to work and the dispute to a committee which awarded them 4¼d a ton more in bords and 2d a ton in headings.¹²⁸

Annual reports from the State mines listing the possible working days which were not worked give a more solid account of mining interruptions than the newspaper reports achieve, though the latter had more influence on public opinion. As a sample, in the year ending 31 March 1943, the Liverpool mine worked 235 days while possible working days, including 13 back Saturdays, numbered 274. There were 11 days of holiday: Good Friday, Easter Monday, Labour Day and eight days at Christmas. Four days were lost in three disputes, over horse-drivers, late trains and ‘preference of men going on coal’. Shortage of transport lost five days, a slip on the roperoad, one day; slips on the railway, 11 days; wind damage, one day; heavy rain, four days; power failure, one day and the funeral of a man killed in the mine, one day.¹²⁹ The Strongman mine, in the year ending 31 March 1944, worked 256 days out of the possible 278, which included 16 ‘back’ Saturdays. Apart from two days off at Easter and eight at Christmas, there were two days lost over wages, one for the bath-house being cold, four in four disputes regarding miners, truckers, a shotfirer and stoppage of lamps. One day was given over to a funeral and four days were lost in protest at the recall to camp of men who had worked in the mines while on military furlough.¹³⁰

Miners' negotiations were many-tiered. First, the secretary of the local union, with a member of the committee from the mine where the dispute occurred, would interview management, and if this failed ask for a local disputes committee to be convened. This would have three representatives of each side; neither the manager nor a union representative of the particular mine would be included, although they could give evidence. If this committee could not reach a settlement, the next step was the appointment of an independent chairman, which was more difficult than it sounds. Each side could

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nominate one, but it was hard to find a man with practical knowledge of mines not biased to one side or the other, and from experience miners were doubtful that a chairman acceptable to the other side would grasp their arguments and the intricate conditions of mine working.¹³¹ If a chairman could not be found, the dispute would go to a national disputes committee, with three representatives of the coal owners and three of the national miners organisation, and if they could not agree on an independent chairman, the government would appoint one. Finally, there was the Coal Mines Council set up by emergency regulations in mid-1940 to maintain steady output, with wide powers over plant, methods, transport, housing, terms of employment and disputes arising from all these things. In practice the Council became a tribunal entirely devoted to trying to secure the rapid settlement of disputes, travelling from coalfield to coalfield and giving decisions on local disagreements.¹³² Its current members were T. O. Bishop, formerly a mining inspector and now secretary of the Coal Mine Owners Association, C. J. Strongman,¹³³ superintendent of the State mines, and A. V. Prendiville, of the Nightcaps Union, who had lately replaced McLagan as national secretary. In all these channels, unless a settlement was really wanted by both sides, a dispute could wander for a long time.

Mining arrangements were obscure to the general public; almost inevitably strikes appeared selfish and frivolous, holding the country to ransom over trifles. Union solidarity seemed automatic and perverse, for dismissals which the miners contested had publicity while nothing was heard of those which they accepted.¹³⁴ When, as often happened, the cause of a minor stoppage was a new issue not dealt with in the award or agreements, it was outside the range of the disputes committee.¹³⁵ It was not generally known that physical conditions varied greatly from mine to mine and from place to place within each mine (hence the importance of cavils), or that agreements which attempted to meet such variations were necessarily complicated, bristling with opportunities for men and management to get at odds in interpretation. Often it was not readily apparent that complaints were long standing or recurrent.

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Perhaps the height of the seeming unreason was reached when, as Java fell in March 1942, 149 men at the Millerton mine, Westport, had a three-day strike claiming wet-time payments for two horse-drivers when it rained during their weekly half-hour drive from the mine mouth to the settlement and back, the drivers having already been allowed 1s 3d a week to buy oilskins. It was stated, not conspicuously, that the claim had been made previously to a local disputes committee without being settled, and had got no further.¹³⁶ The statement by the union that 17 pairs of miners at Millerton were producing a record 500 tons of coal a day, 90 per cent of it cut in the open under a 50 foot roof, producing cheap coal for the company while in danger of death or maiming,¹³⁷ seemed strangely inconsistent with such a fuss over a wetting. The committee hearing the dispute decided that the drivers should be paid wet-time money for the days when they got wet.¹³⁸

It was easy to forget that, despite increased precautions, mining was still a relatively dangerous job; small notices appeared from time to time, saying, for instance, that Jack Stephens, 42, with wife and daughter, was killed at Denniston by a fall of coal when he was removing a prop, the handle of a pick piercing his chest;¹³⁹ that Robert Glen, 39, married, died in a few hours of injuries to chest and spine from a fall of stone at the Dobson mine;¹⁴⁰ that George Wilson, aged 58, died in hospital of injuries received that morning in the Wairaki mine.¹⁴¹ Between 1940 and 1945, the number of men employed in mines ranged roughly between 5000 and 5600. In 1940, eight were killed and 23 seriously injured; in 1941, four were killed, 20 seriously injured; in 1944, 12 were killed, 36 seriously injured,¹⁴² and each year there were more than 2000 lesser injuries. Awareness of such risks heightened grievance and brought blood-eloquence into miner–boss relations.

Miners' pay varied; some were on contract, some on wages, some were paid differing tonnage rates, while there were sundry allowances and deductions. It was widely thought that they were well paid; H. G. Dickie,¹⁴³ National MP, said in October 1942: ‘I would rather lose money in a mine than work in it. I admit that coal-mining is an unpleasant, wet, dirty job; but the men earn jolly good wages.’¹⁴⁴

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The research of Dr A. E. C. Hare¹⁴⁵ qualified this belief: he found that while between 1914 and 1939 coal miners' wages rose 68 per cent, the general average increase for other industries was 77 per cent, miners falling from fourth to tenth on the pay-rate list, with an average weekly wage of £8 15s 2d in 1939. This rose to £10 9s 10d in 1942, and £11 11s 2d in 1944, but this increase, by about a third between 1939 and 1944, was no more than that received by a number of factory workers.¹⁴⁶ In April 1945 Prendiville, president of the United Mine Workers Federation, said that except for the two wartime five per cent cost of living bonuses, coal hewers were then working for the same rates that applied in 1931, ‘before the coal owners smashed the agreements.’ These rates were 3s 6¼d a ton in Waikato mines, 3s 2¾d on the West Coast.¹⁴⁷ The Coal Mine Owners Association, in reply, pointed out that during the war miners' average daily earnings were 30s 6d in 1939, 39s 4d in 1942 and 45s 10d in 1944; at the Renown mine they were 31s 6d in 1939, 38s 11d in 1942, 48s in 1944. At Denniston average earnings were 40s 5½d, 42s 2½d and 43s 9½d in the respective years; at the Strongman State mine 32s in 1940, 40s 2d in 1942 and 42s 2d in 1944.¹⁴⁸

The New Zealand Herald on 10 September 1942 summarised a ‘typical’ wages sheet for a pair of Waikato miners; many, it was stated, showed higher totals, particularly where extra shifts were worked, and others considerably lower. These two men in a fortnight hewed 113 tons 17 hundredweight of coal at 3s 6¼d a ton and 113 tons 18 hundredweight at 3s 10½d a ton, making a total of £42 2s 3d, the different tonnage rates being due to differences in the width and height of the face, or other working conditions. Several extras, 13s 9d for stone, £1 4s 2d for doing their own trucking, 12s 6d for breaking away a new face, £1 5s 6d for setting timber, with 10 per cent added according to their agreement, brought the total up to £50 10s. From this was deducted £4 9s 7d for explosives, 6s for check weighing the company's figures, 5s 3d for tools, 2s for the doctor, 1s for the ambulance, reducing it to £45 6s 2d, or about £11 6s 6d a week for each man.¹⁴⁹ These details indicate the complexity of mining pay calculations. The Herald stated that the minimum wage for Waikato coalhewers was 26s 8d a day and if through

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no fault of their own they could not average this over a fortnight the difference was made up by management. In the report of the Pukemiro inquiry¹⁵⁰ the minimum daily rate was given as 25s 4d; the report is more authoritative than the Herald article.

Other examples of pay figures come from annual reports of State mines. In 1942–3, at the Strongman, 52 men and 11 boys worked on the surface, while underground 79 deputies, shiftmen and truckers, and 52 coalhewers, produced 94 170 tons of coal. Each coalhewer's average daily output was 7½ tons, and his daily earnings £2 9s 9d gross, or £2 4s 7d after paying for explosive, while a total of £71 1s 11d was paid out over the year to make up the minimum wage. At the Liverpool mine, where 67 men and 13 boys on the surface and 236 workers underground produced 165 837 tons, the 86 coalhewers each averaged 9 tons 1 hundredweight a day, earning £2 12s 1d gross, or £2 8s 6d net, with £3 10s 3d paid out to make up minimum wage deficiencies. At Blackball, taken over in difficulties in July 1941, 34 527 tons were produced by 23 men and 4 boys working on the surface, 33 truckers and 27 coalhewers who each cut 7 tons 11 hundredweight a day, for £2 8s 7d gross or £2 4s 7d net, with no deficiency payments required. From Tatu, near Ohura, came 29 619 tons, produced by 88 workers, 24 of them coalhewers each averaging 6 tons 4 hundredweight daily for £2 2s 6d net, with no minimum wage payments.¹⁵¹

Newspaper letters give a few other glimpses. To a suggestion that miners were unaware of the war and that some might well spend a week in camp or be taken on aerial patrols or minesweepers in rough weather,¹⁵² ‘A miner's wife’ replied that the fighting lads at least had fresh air and could see the sky, but a miner had no sky or fresh air nor could he wash his hands to eat his lunch. ‘The miners are doing their own job and minding their own business. They are not telling others to do better. They have enough to do to knock out a wage. I was charged 6s 4d in town for a bag of coal.¹⁵³ My husband gets 3s 6d a ton to cut the coal. Out of that he has to pay for light, tools, powder, boots, clothes and tax.’¹⁵⁴ Another letter spoke of boots lasting eight weeks, trousers and shirts six, of sore eyes, scratched faces, arms and legs, of muscles aching from pick work in cramped quarters, ‘some of the “places” being only 2 ft high’,

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and then Home Guard on Sundays.¹⁵⁵ A miner, stung by a farmer saying to an appeal board that miners were down the mine for only five and a half hours a day, finishing at 3 pm, with no work on Saturdays, wrote that all the 55 men in his mine left the pit top by 8 each morning and emerged between 3.15 and 3.30 pm. ‘I work at least six and three-quarter hours daily—I am allowed one hour travelling time on top of this—so my day's work is nearly as long as the man who works outside in the sunshine, and I can safely say this goes for the majority of mine employees.’ Many did not work on Saturday, but many others did so.¹⁵⁶

There were frequent complaints about absenteeism, some from the miners' champion, P. C. Webb,¹⁵⁷ as well as from management. Poor attendances on the alternate ‘back’ Saturdays which, because of the coal shortage, miners were asked and agreed to work from April to September each year of the war, had special and often critical mention,¹⁵⁸ but not till May 1943 were pay rates for Saturday work raised to time-and-a-half—when men worked more than 11 shifts in a fortnight;¹⁵⁹ a year later all Saturday work was at time-and-a-half.¹⁶⁰ Miners also, at government request, worked on such holidays as May Day, King's Birthday and Labour Day, and back Saturdays in some Decembers.¹⁶¹ The Northern Miners Union claimed in July 1942 that there was ‘no great unjustifiable absenteeism’, union tallies showing a rate of 4 per cent.¹⁶² This was not very different from the 5.2 per cent of unjustifiable absences recorded at Huntly during a fortnight in May 1943 by the Mines Department.¹⁶³ Again, in May 1944, Webb stated that during the past 48 weeks, at 25 principal collieries, on the coalface voluntary absenteeism amounted to 4.9 per cent of man-shifts, with justified absences taking another 9.3 per cent. Comparative British figures were 6.1 and 9.6 per cent respectively. Among New Zealand mine workers not on the coalface, voluntary absenteeism was 3.5 per cent, and justified absences 6.8 per cent, with comparative British figures 4.9 and 7.5 per cent.¹⁶⁴ Dr Hare in 1943 wrote that the rate of absenteeism among miners ‘is much lower than public discussion might suggest’.

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Official records recently instituted at the main mines showed that 10.8 per cent of the total shifts which could have been worked during the four winter months May–August 1943 were lost through absence, but sickness, accidents, etc, accounted for 7.6 per cent, leaving only 3.2 per cent of unexplained absenteeism.¹⁶⁵

In human terms it was not strange that, despite the war, some miners dodged work on very slender pretexts or none at all to, say, stay in bed, garden, go whitebaiting or go to the pub,¹⁶⁶ now that fear of losing the job was removed. For all the talk of sending lazy or difficult miners into the Army, miners held power and they knew it. The miner's working day was supposed to be of eight hours, from when he entered the mine until he left it, including the time taken to walk to his working place. Several Huntly managers in 1940 told a Manpower committee that the men were in fact observing a 7-hour day, and had whittled down their actual working time, exclusive of meal and travelling times, to about 5 or 5½ hours daily; output was falling while miners averaged 34s a day and truckers 21s 1d; owners were powerless to enforce full working hours and absenteeism was a problem.¹⁶⁷ Tom Hall, secretary of the Northern Miners Union, spoke of miners receiving 26s 1d a day, not 34s, claimed that they were working harder than others in the community and explained that men knocked off early to get cleaned up at inadequate bath houses before the train left, while young men walked out more quickly than the older ones. But he also said, ‘I was whipped to do things seven years ago which I am not whipped to do today.’¹⁶⁸

George Lawson, secretary of the Pukemiro union, pointed out that to earn 34s a day in an average pick place at the average tonnage rate of 3s 6¼d per ton, the miner must dig 10 tons or more, as the extras allowed for setting timber, etc, did not meet the cost of his explosives. He wanted a full inquiry into the industry from producer to consumer, with attention to middleman costs. ‘Let the public remember, when next they pay £3 and upwards for a ton of coal, that the miner who risks his life daily for the princely sum of 34s and often much less, receives 3s 6¼d for digging that ton of

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coal.’ He appealed to readers not to take everything they saw printed about coal miners as absolutely authentic.¹⁶⁹

Little public attention was given to the miserable housing of most miners, nor was this generally associated with their grudging attitudes. The Depression years had checked all house building at mining settlements, and at the privately-owned mines there had been no worthwhile move to close the gap between what existed and what was needed. Few miners could afford to build decent houses, and mine owners had a very limited sense of responsibility in this area. When Webb on 7 July 1942 said in the House that some hovels at Burnett's Face were a disgrace to New Zealand, the Westport Coal Company replied that these were the property of the miners themselves, and though their external appearance might be unpretentious, ‘the furnishings internally are exceedingly good and would compare more than favourably with most workmen's homes in New Zealand.’ At Denniston, however, the company, at capital cost of £20,000, had built 39 houses for its employees, 10 of three rooms, 18 of four rooms, seven of five rooms, the rest of six to eight rooms; five small houses were then vacant.¹⁷⁰ Denniston, clinging to its bare rock, was probably the most desolate mining township but, though the locale of others might be less harsh, they were all generally meagre and dreary. Those in the Waikato were no exceptions; in April 1941 Webb and the Waikato owners, aiming at increased production, had discussed the acute housing shortage in the Huntly area, where single men could not get board and a number were living in tents and roughly made baches near the mines.¹⁷¹

With coal a national necessity, mine owners felt that it was government's responsibility to build workers' houses at private mines,¹⁷² and they were not alone in this view. The Press, for instance, stated: ‘It may as reasonably be argued that the State should provide miners' houses as that the companies should. Miners' earnings put them in as good a position as other workers to build or buy their own homes. Those who prefer to rent houses have as strong a claim as other workers to be assisted through the State's housing programme.’¹⁷³ The government, while accepting the need to build modestly at its own mines, was very guarded about doing this where it would assist mine owners. In July–August 1942, the government began building 40 houses in the Grey district, half at Dunollie for

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State miners and half near the Dobson and Wallsend mines, both taken over some six months later,¹⁷⁴ while announcing that houses would soon be provided in the Waikato, subject to negotiations with the mine owners.