PRISON LABOR.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2085, 29 October 1880, Page 3

PRISON LABOR.

[By Tkleqeaph.]

[fbom oub own cobsbspondhnt.] WELLINGTON, October 28. la reference to the telegraphic statement that the Lyttelton Borough Council had refused to accept the Government terms for prison labor, the “Post” says:—“The announcement made u few days ago that the Government had intimated to local bodies employing prison labor that in future they would be required to pay for it at the rate of 75 per cent, of the current rates, was perhaps calculated to create a wrong impression that the Government intended to compete with free labor by underselling in market. The fact, however, is that certain local bodies, notably in Canterbury, have hitherto enjoyed the great advantage of gratuitous prison labor for their public works. In justice to the free laborers who found employment so scarce, and to the rest of the colony who contributed towards the cost of the prison maintenance, it has been therefore decided that in future local bodies, instead of being allowed the use of prison labor gratis, in fact at the expense of the whole colony, shall pay for it at the rate of 25 per cent, under the current "scale of wages, prison labour being valued at about so much less than free labour in respect of the results given. It is quite clear that so long as locul bodies could get their work done without having to pay for it they would not be likely to employ free labourers whom they would have to pay, and so the unfortunate unemployed were unable to obtain work because they had so formidable a competitor in gratuitous convict labour. Under the new arrangement, although the rate of pay demanded by the Government for prison labor is nominally 25 per cent, less than current wages, the work produced is admittedly so far inferior as to compensate fully for the difference. The result is that the two classes of labor will compete on equal terms, and it now appears that oue local body, at any rate, refuses to employ prison labor, even at 25 per cent, under current rates. If this example is followed by other bodies we believe that the Government have in view certain works on which the convict labor can be utilised without in any way entering into competition with the ordinary wages class of workmen.”