TRADE AND LABOUR NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 19

TRADE AND LABOUR NOTES.

(By INDUSTRIAL TRAMP.) UNIOK MEETINGS FOR THE WJ£J£& Monday, September oO —Bricklayers Wednesday, October 2—Auckland Carpen ters, Biscuit and Confectionery Workers Onehunga Carpenters. Thursday, Octooer o—Plumbers' Educa tlonal, Kope and Twine Workers. UNEMPLOYMENT. There is very little improvement t< report this week in connection wit! unemployment in Auckland, and whet work is obtained the bulk of it it casual work. In the female employment section, workers in the clothing lactones are fully employed just now, for it is the busy season, when summer stocks have to be prepared, and female machinists are at a premium until the orders •have been completed. In some instances 'girls who have been out of the business ior five or six years are coming into >the factories again to resume work at I the machine. I'here is a pathetic reason for this resumption; they left the trade I when they got married, but the husj band, through scarcity of work and j readjustment of staffs, is compelled to 'join the ranks of the unemployed, and i the wife, through stress of circumstances |has had to become the breadwinner! It ie amongst the clerical workers that the stress of unemployment pressee very hard at the present time. For some ■ years past, girls have been led to regard ■work in a factory, even though better paid for than office work, as distasteful and undignified, with the result that the majority of girls on leaving school have entered on an expensive course of shorthand, typewriting and bookkeeping, until that avenue of labour has become clogged with hundreds of female aspirants lor work. Many a girl now, alter an expensive course of instruction, is glad to start in an office at the heartbreaking figure of 15/ or £1 per week, a figure that is not self-supporting for any girl. The secretary of a trade union, who advertised for an office girl a lew days ago, received 43 replies from anxious girls for the position. I am inclined to agree with Mr. Albert Spencer, president of the Auckland Provincial Employers' Association, in his address to the members at Thursday's annual meeting, when he says: '"Of education the. general opinion is that the present system is ...not only too costly, but has not proved suitable to the. requirements ■of the country." We are turning out our youth of both eexes with an education totally unsuitable for the vocations that they will eventually have to earn their living with, with the idea that they will pursue an occupation that has prestige and distinction, but very little hope of profitable remuneration. This is seen in the overcrowded state of our professions —legal, medical and scholastic. As a leading lawyer remarked cynically to me the other day, "Our profession is grossly overcrowded; we are turning out lawyers with the machine-like regularity that a eausage machine turns out sausages." The teaching profession is similarly congested, while even medical men find it hard to keep out of the Bankruptcy Court. As Mr. Spencer further says: "Those closely , in- touch with industry. maintain that '• a good primary education is all that, is .-- mecessary- -_rrfor- jan 'artisan, -The tendency of secondary, university, and even '"technical training, applied indiscriminately, is probably neither beneficial to the individual nor to the community." ' V BELATED • CRITICISM. Mr. -Spencer, in his annual address, indulges in a criticism of the immigration system which is quite justified but somewhat belated. If such a statement dad' been made about four or five yeare xgo, when the Auckland trades unions .vere sending deputation after deputa;ion to protest to Mr. Coates every time ie came to Auckland against the assisted ind free immigration scheme that was anding from ,twelve to .fifteen thousand mmigrants; on bur wharves, instituted ),y the, late, Mr. W. F. Massey and con;inued by hie successor, it. would probibly have caused the influx to be stopped ong before it was. We have to combat ;hat evil tc-day. As Mark Anthony, in iis eulogy'on the body of Julius Caesar, ;o tritely says: "The evil that men do ives after them; the good ie oft interred vith their bones." Having allowed the ivil, of immigration on free and cheap ines to became rampant, the dead leforni Government leaves it as a egacy to a Liberal Administration to teal with. RUMANIAN TRADE UNIONS. ~ . The Rumanian Government ie at preent engaged in a so-called "purgatory" :ampaign. - Trade unions are dissolved, md in this respect the Government is anything but discriminating. Ostensibly hese activities are only directed against he "unitary" (i.e., Communist) organjeaions. Every opportunity ie taken, howiver, also to attack the "free' trade

unions. This' must be attributed partly to ill-will on the part of the executive officials, and partly to ignorance of the nature of trade, unionism on the part of the public prosecutors. The "free" trade unions, who consider these activities to be illegal as such, have done their utmost to protect at least their own organisations against. the attacks of over-zealous officials.—l.F.T.U. Press report. ' THE MACHINE AGE. "Automatic machinery compulsorily installed on account of external competitive forces hae through its very nature altered in a large degree the . hitherto necessary employment of fully skilled workers. Nowadays semi-skilled and even quite unskilled operatives can control ■ many of the machines in the manufacturing division of the engineering industry." " '. These pregnant words are Inserted in , an opinion added to the engineers' award : by Mr. Schmitt, employers' representa- : tive on the Court of Arbitration. Though '. we may disagree with Mr. Schmitt on . the degree of individual skill required \ in the working of modern machinery, . and' might reasonably claim that greater . watchfulness is now needed to cope with added dangers, still, in the main, his ■ statement is correct. There is the ■ acknowledged tendency of-machinery to : make man a drudge —a mere cog in the ; wheel. But in proportion to the drudgery of a. man's occupation, so ; should Mβ hours be lessened. He cannot , simulate interest in a task that has no elements to exercise his faculties. Hours should be lessened —that is, the relief ' Labour requires and expects from the machine. A man should not be tied to ' a job fo" the same length of time as | when that job required long iiours of toil in order that it could be successfully accomplished. Too much has already been seen of the effect of machiaery in. the displacement of human : labour without any corresponding benefit ; to those who are retained in industry.— J.S.S. in "The Labour Movement," Dunedin "Evening Star."