EIGHT HOURS' MOVEMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume III, Issue 636, 25 January 1872, Page 2

EIGHT HOURS' MOVEMENT.

To the Editor of the Evening Stab. Sic, —With your permission I wish to make a few remarks respecting the strike of the navvies on the Waikato railway. Although the facts of the case are well stated in your paper, yefc there are not •wanting those who would misrepresent the facts of the case. It is well known that the strike is not for a higher wage but for the regulation of time, for the eight We do not want overtime. We hold if a man works as he should through the hours of the day he will not want overtime. In fact 1 have never found the man yet who after having wrought hard and fast for eight hours to be willing to resume work again. If he did he could not do his duty, much less resume his work to the satisfaction of his master. I can say for a fact it is not the navvies who want overtime. I speak on good authority, being conversant with most of them. It was Mr. Brogden's own foreman that originated the making of overtime to the plate-layer and his gang, and to them, and them alone, is the desire of making overtime due. If it is true, as the Herald states, that we cannot afford fco construct railways except by enforcing an extra hour into the day's labor, Mr Vogel had better stayed at home, and not have squandered the revenue of the country in fruitless negotiation of loans, and the name of Brogden had never been mooted in New Zealand as a railway contractor. As for the nine hour system, it is bad policy, come from where it may. Any sensible man knows that there is a limit to a man's vital energy. If he cannot do a day's work in eight hours, neither caii he in nine. Brogden and the Government must think we are a lot of machines, and so long as we can drink water and oatmeal, we can work any number of hours. I am, &c, One of the Men on Stbike.