MOB RULE AT WORST

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 162, 1 October 1941, Page 6

MOB RULE AT WORST

WORKMEN SWINDLE FIRMS

SCANDALOUS RACKET

flic "Swindlers' Mutual: Insurance Company"—a west of Scotland factory racket so named by Sheriff Hamilton at Paisley Sheriff Court—■ was described to the Sunday Express as "pure terrorism" and "mob law at its worst."

By this racket, men fined for fraudulent absence from the factory have their fines levied on other workers under threat of violence. This is how it works :

Unscruplous workers who want a day off with pay clock on in the morning, hand their cards to friends, then leave the factory to idle 1 or work elsewhere.

The friends get the cards, stamped in the evening and the men draw pay for hours of work the} r have not done. Their friends, of course, get

a "cut."

With so many men continually entering and leaving the factory this swindle is difficult to detect. Yet the police catch many offenders.

Fines Sheet

These offenders are fined heavily (Sheriff Hamilton made Uvo of them pay £20 each). Then comes! the racket, the biggest scandal of all.

A subscription sheet goes round the part of the factory in -which they work. "There is a fine to be paid," the workers are told.

Some of them paj* up cheerfully —it may be their turn next.

"Those who refuse risk a beating up outside the factory or some other net of terrorism," a worker said.

A lorry driver who refused found his lorry engine so tampered with that it took him the rest of the afternoon to fix it up.

Sheriff Hamilton .said he hoped the fines of £20 he imposed would test the "Swindlers' Mutual Insurance Company." He added: '"I am becoming tired of imposing fines in these cases."