Another Labor Bill

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 35, 8 September 1892, Page 2

Another Labor Bill

♦ We are indebted to a contemporary for a sketch of tbis interesting production of our paternal Government. Ostensibly it provides for the creation of a Labour Department, and defines the powers and duties of such department ; but in reality it would interfere with every class of business, and render it practically impossible to carry on many business operations. The Minister is to have inquisitorial authority and a statutory right to be informed as to all arrangements between employes ; the conduct of commercial and trading establishments, and, indeed, every enterprise ; and further to investigate all matters in dispute between masters and men. It is declared to be his duty to put bis finger into everybody's pie, and he would constitute himself a sort of Star Chamber, before which every citizen wlio employs labor may be arraigned, and compelled, under heavy penalties, to disclose the particulars of bis business. The Government would seem to be emulating the French Revolutionary Tribunal of 1792 ; but we hardly think that tho poople of

Jew Zealand will submit to the proposed lirect interference of the Government in ill affairs, public and private. In this Bill " workman " is defined as any person, male or female, who is engaged or employed to do any manual labour of any kind, whether technical, skilled or unskilled, and the general duties of the Labor Department are declared to be to acquire and diffuse among the inhabitants of New Zealand useful information on subjects connected with labor, and especially on its relations to capital — the hours of labor, the earnings of workmen, the means of promoting tbeir material, social, intellectual, and moral prosperity, and the general relations of employer and workman. This of course reads very nicely indeed, and would by itself excite no opposition, but the BiU gives power to the Minister to obtain from workmen or employers any information he may deem necessary relative to the business carried on, under a penalty of not less than £20 or exceeding £100. The Minister is also authorised to obtain further and other information, either general or particular, " relating to combinations of capital, business operations, or labor, and their effect on production and prices of commodities, and also as to the effect which laws relating to the sale of, and dealing with, lands of the Crown and other lands or laws relating to the duties of Customs have on the operations of labor."