SALARIES OF LABOUR LEADERS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 139, 8 March 1920, Page 7

SALARIES OF LABOUR LEADERS

EFFECT OF 3JIOOO A YEAE,

The salaries of trade union officials have always been the causo of much jealousy and bad feeling in the trade unions, and the recent increases in tho salaries of the officials of the N.IJ.R. have intensified this jealousy among the rank and file in the Labour movement (says the "Morning Post"). In , tho ' current issue of "Solidarity," a Syndicalist paper which represents the shop stewards and workers' committees, this question of payment to trade union leader is discussed by" Mr. K T. AVhitehead, of the Vehicle Workers' Union.

."We of the Workers' Committee movement," writes Mr. Whitehead, "are not out to wreck and, destroy tho trade unions. It should be our policy, however, to purge them nnd cleanse them, and transform them into the weapon with which to gain tho world for the workers. As a first step' it is absolutely necessary to abolish the present system of a small army of .well paid officials, ranging from Jimmy Thomas'and his a year, to the .£6 and JST.a. week organisers, and, as a preliminary move, the following resolution has heen tabled in my own union, the vehicle workers:— 'That tho wages of the whole : of the chief' officials of this union shall be paid weekly, and shall be the wage of a top grade L.G.O.C. 'bus driver, working a nbminal week of 48 hours, and the wage of all other full-time employees shall' bo. the similar wage of an L.G.O.C. 'bus conductor.' "

The object of this proposal is to drivo out of the unions ambitious men. "The place for ambitious men is hot with, the proletarian army in the class struggle," says Mr. Whitehead. "Men that want a high wage for their brains, and. are ambitious, should go outsido and help the capitalists exploit tho wage. slaves. That is their spiritual home." If a permanent official is given a middle-class salary, "with power to save money and use it for 'investing' and bleeding other ■workers," and living in a middle-class neighbourhood and wearing ."well-cut middle-class clothes, and. entertaining on middle-class scale, with his job and 1 Balary the n\oi'6 secure the J»ss industrial unrest there is; it is a £1000 to a monkey-nut that his ideas ohango exactly as his economic position changes, and he joins tho great caucus of Labour Bleeders."

This comrade anticipates that tho Labour lender with, personal interests "will squeal like a stuck pig at the idea of coming back to the position that he occupied as a workor once himself," and sr.ch leaders "will rush off to Government jobs in the Ministry of This and tho Ministry of' That at high . screws and fat pensions."

The Labour Movement advocates brotherhood and comradeship. The above is en example of the brotherly t'nd comradely feeling that prevails within the irovement! 1