HARASSED -EMPLOYERS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 903, 24 August 1910, Page 5

HARASSED -EMPLOYERS.

SOKE FACTS AND FIGURES. \ THE CHECKS ON ENTERPRISE. (By Teleeraph.-Press Association.) . Auckland, August 23. Mr. D. Goldiei in the course of his presidential speech at the annual meeting of the Auckland Employers' Fcder-. ation, said that one thing was very 'evi-. dent from a perusal of the annual report of the Labour Department, viz., that the continual irritation and harassment to which manufacturers, have been, and are being, subjected by the hordes of inspectors and union officials, had compelled a halt in the growth of the industrial life of the community. Whilst the average annual increase of factories (a factory in the Dominion being a place where two. or more persons aro employed) for the nine years preceding the last'was-622, last year it was only 262, or 360 below the average of the years mentioned. The report also showed

\\\t, for the first time in fifteen years, there had been a decrease in the number of persons employed in. the .various factories to the . number '' of 1042; and, whils-t the number of workers had thus decreased, the wages paid to those remaining bad increased .by 180,715, .or- an increase of 3.per cent, over that of the previous year, which also had an increase l of .€390,207 over that of the previous year,, or equal to an. increase of 7 per, cent. : Although the number of employees for that year had only increased by 223, the increase in wages thus paid for the last two years had been £571,922, with 819 workers less to receive it. .. The factories in Auckland alone paid last year some £75,950 more than the previous year, although employing 212 operatives less. ' As'further evidence of tho waning tendencies in' our factories, there .was the fact that we-had in our employ 1258 less workers under the' ago of twenty-one than we hud during.-the previous-year. This the Department, of Labour attributed to the decline in the birth-rate, but, possibly,' the increased cost of > production had caused factory owners to import more largely the manufactured article than heretofore, they being able to do so at a less cost than by continuing the manufacture of it themselves. Industries which at one time flom"»''cdin Auckland "had gone back during the last few years, , and unless, something was speedily done they would almost, if 'not altogether, cease to exist...