THE LABOR MOVEMENT

Evening Star, Issue 19798, 23 February 1928, Page 14

THE LABOR MOVEMENT

[By Veteran.] Brief contributions on mailers with reference to the Cabo* Movement nre invitedUNEMPLOYMENT. Certainly there inis been n good deal of unemployment in New Zealand, but I think there have been other places that have been worse oil'. Australia, for instance, especially South Australia, as the report of the Labor niovcnncnt in that State shows. » * * * LA 13011 IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA. Many union secretaries have received advice of a variation in the cost of living figures for the coming quarter or half-year, as the case may be. Organisations working under hall-yearly determinations have in most_ instances received an increase, while those operating under quarterly adjustments will fall away by Is. Tbo Conchmakers’ Federation has dropped Is per week. The Printing Industry Employees’ Union will benefit by a rise of 2s for males and Is for females, the change to become effective from Friday, February 3. Members of the Theatrical Employees’ Union will receive an increase of Is (nudes) and 6d (females). Casual operators will receive £1 7s 6d for each performance, an increase of 6d. operators on continuous shows will receive £2 18s 3d, or an increase of Bd. Carpenters and property hands will receive an in- [ crease of Jd an hour and casual I laborers )d. The payment will be from February 3. Ironworkers will receive Is a week in wages, but the country has not been altered. Members of the Australian Society of Engineers have been advised of a decrease of Is, as also have the members of the Amalgamated Society of, Engineers. Gas Employees’ Union members will go up Is.. The Minister of Industry has just stated that the Industrial Code, 1920, required all occupiers of factories and employers of persons covered by determinations of industrial hoards to lodge, on or before December 7 last, a record of the names, work, and wages of their; employees. A number of employers, had incurred a heavy penalty by neglecting to lodge such returns, in addition to which the department 1 was now being put to the trouble and expense of making preparations for enforcing compliance and recovering the penalties provided. Occupiers of factories and owners or lessees of lifts, and so on. also wero required to reregister their factories and lifts on or before January 31, and failure to do so would render them liable to heavy penalties. It will be interesting to note what has happened and what will happen. _ Will the Tories spare the rod to their delinquent brethren ? There are just about 3,000 men out of work in this State. "At any rate that number is registered as unemployed. Things are indeed very serious”. Poor fellow's—some of them are truly frantic. No wonder. On February 3, both in tho morning and afternoon, about 200 unemployed awaited the Commissioner of Police, who received a deputation from them, unofficially. Of course, the Commissioner is helpless to assist them, but ho hoard the unpalatable truth. He was told that hundreds of them were hungry and cold, and had been sleeping in tho parks, and that at that moment there were nearly 1,000 assembled in the muster room at the Labor Exchange. Parliamentary Labor in South Australia has never had a more vigilant and vigorous official Leader of the Opposition than Lionel L. Hill. In that responsible and, engrossing office he has enhanced his splendid reputation as a political fighter in tho relief of the necessitous. Ho states emphatically that the unemployed position is acute, and will be worse if something were not done immediately. He suggests that hundreds more men could be employed on the metropolitan waterworks and sowers. On January 3, in company with Mr J. Harvey, M.P. (Acting Opposition Whip), he visited the Labor Exchange and secured information regarding the unemployed situation. Subsequently he sought to interview three Ministers — the Premier,, the Chief Secretary, and the Commissioner of Public Works—but they were absent from their offices. The Attorney-General, however, granted an interview. The situation was placed before the legal Minister, and suggestions wore made whore men could he absorbed in the Waterworks and Sowers Department. The Attor-ney-General promised to lay the matter before the Government. It might ho urged, ho added, that the Government was not justified in expending money on non-profitablo public, works, hut such arguments could not be applied to sewers and metropolitan waterworks. Last year the metropolitan sewers returned 6.69 per cent, net revenue on the capital cost of the work. The Butler Government had imposed 25 per cent. The whole of the waterworks of the State returned 3.22 per cent., which included tho Tod Diver. Since Butler Government had imposed 25 per cent, surcharge, and tho return would ho much greater. Therefore it would ho seen that, apart from the urgency of tho work that was’required to ho carried nut to give the necessary service to the metropolitan community it was a paying proposition which would absorb some hundreds of willing workers. During the last twelve months more than 800 men have been retrenched from the Sowers Department. » * * » MELBOURNE’S UNEMPLOYED. To devise means of obviating unemployment in the Melbourne mctropolitan area, tho Lord Mayor of Melbourne summoned, n representntive confeienco recently. The conference was attended by representatives of tho unions, employers’ associations, the State Government, municipalities, and the various hoards of works. In outlining his reasons tor calling the conference, the lord mayor stressed the importance of supplying work and not charity. The men did not want charity, lie said. They wanted work, and the sooner works were put in hand the better, not only for tho unemployed, but for the State as a whole. , He appealed to the organisations to at onco make available for works money that in the ordinary course would not bo spent until late in the year, or even next year. . . The Board of Works announced Inat £182,000 would ho made available, and the Fire Brigade Board’s representatives announced their intention of spending £30,000. Tho Premier indicated that the State was contemplating the allocation of a large sum for various urgent works. He will bring tho matter before Cabinet at its next meeting. Municipalities and other employers or labor would spend large sums on constructional works this year, it was stated.

• * * * WELLINGTON AND WORK. To the casual visitor Wellington still holds its reputation as a very busy city even in these dull times. Aided by its central position, by its being the seat of Government and having a large army of civil servants, business appears to strike a northerner as fairly brisk, and it is only on inquiry at the unions at the Trades Hall, and the offices of the Labor Department, that one is confronted with the thought that the gaunt spectre of unemployment is also in evidence in Wellington. Around the Labor Department office in To Aro there is still the same large queue of seekers after work that exists m Auckland. True, it is in front of a special door, down a right of way from the main street that the queue of hungry seekers is seen, but it is there nevertheless, and tne situation must be coped with before winter comes. I only had a- couple of hours to look around me, for I was busy most of the days

in conciliation council,' but I could not help noticing that Wellington building had fallen off considerably. In iact, the most important building that 1 saw in progress was tho Wellington Trades Mall and Workers’ Printing Office in one building, estimated to cost £40,00(1 by the time it is finished. It is now a nuiss of iron columns and beams, all ready Tor the concrete, and the foundation stone is being laid this afternoon by the Loader of the Opposition (Air IT. E. Holland, M.P.). I came away from the Trades Hall impressed with the optimistic spirit of the union officials in Wellington. At the entrance gate a lovely little three-sea tor car, drawir up at the kerb, caught my eye. It had a coronet or crest on the door panel, and the thought (lashed on my mind that His Excellency the Governor General was visiting the new building to inspect progress. But close examination showed tho “coronet” to be the crest of tho Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners in colors, and my gubernatorial thoughts ramo down with'a thud. It, was a car provided by the Wellington branch of the society, for its organising _ secretary to carry out his duties. Quite a step in advance of Hie Auckland brunch, whose organiser still laboriously uses •‘shanks’s pony” that Nature has endowed him with.—“lndustrial Tramp,” in the Auckland ‘Star.’ * * * ♦ DISTANT FIELDS NOT ALWAYS GREEN. Some six or eight months ago, it may be remembered, "mention in this column was frequently made of the large number of local tradesmen who drew clearances from their respective unions, to voyage to Sydney, where work was reported to bo rather plentiful. The number stretched into hundreds who looked upon Australia as an El Dorado, so far as employment is concerned. In the Sydney 1 Sun ’ of January 25 I take the following captions:—“Workless,” “Unions Hard Hit,” “Worst For Years.”

‘ 1 The policy of ‘up overtime ’ by trades union members, in order to help their unemployed comrades, is in operation,” according to .the secretary of the Labor Council (Mr J. S. Garden). It is not yet 100 per cent, effective, he said. T nit would take lime. “ Unemployment is growing every day,” he added. “It is the worst spell I have known during ray twelve years as secretary of tho Labor Council.” Approximate figures as to unemployment were made available at the Labor Research Bureau this morning for the following unions:— Ironworkers 1,400, carpenters 1,000, eoachraakers 700, textile workers 600, stovemakers 500, meat industry 450, Amalgamated Engineering Union 300, quarrymen 250, painters 250, bricklayers 200, shipwrights 200, engine drivers 200, boilermakers 150, plumbers 100, electrical trades 100, hairdressers 100, sheet metal workers 96, amalgamated printing trades 52, a total of 6,448.

x * * •« ACT NOT YET PROCLAIM]®,

Consideration is to he given by the Victorian State Labor Cabinet to the question of fixing a date on which the Apprenticeship Act, passed by Parliament last session, shall come into operation. The Labor Minister for Education (Mr Lemon), who has been to Western Australia, finds that in that State there is no Apprenticeship Act and no Apprenticeship Commission, but the State Arbitration Court prescribes terms and conditions of apprenticeship, and employers and employees appoint representatives to trade committees similar to those which would he established under the Victorian Act. He had discussed the system with representatives of employers and employees, who said that it was working satisfactorily. In South Australia there is an Act similar to the Victorian Act, and tho system is working satisfactorily, employers and employees speaking highly of it. One result had been that attendances at technical schools were increased. ' * * * + GROWTH OP CO-OPERATIVE MEMBERSHIP. The latest figures issued by the Cooperative Union, Limited, of Great Britain, contained in the congress report, 1927, show how surprisingly the co-op-erativo movement has been growing of recent years. _ Since 1910 the membership of societies has been doubled, and at the end of 1926 stood at 5,186,728. The year’s increase was 275,745, tho biggest stride of any year in the history of the movement, with the exception of 1919 and 1920. There are 1,280 retail societies, with an average membership of 4,052. compared to 1,789 in 1910 and 450 about thirty years ago. Most of tho societies, however, are small, and 594 have an average of 1,000 members and under. There nre now ton societies with a membership of over 50,000 each.