OVERSEA CARPENTERS

Grey River Argus, 22 September 1937, Page 5

OVERSEA CARPENTERS

Guarantee of Work WELLINGTON MEN COMPLAIN. [Per Press Association], WELLINGTON, September 21. Fifteen Wellington carpenters were discharged from the State Housing construction job at Lower Hutt last Thursday. The carpenters who came from Great Britain and from Australia were kept on. The Secretary of the Wellington City Branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, Mr. J. Moulton, stated to-day that overseas labour was engaged through advertisement in overseas papers. One such advertisement inserted in the the Glasgow Daily Record offered a written guarantee of three years’ work. Some local carpenters, he said, had been several years on relief work at low rates. He said that the housing scheme was not only intended to meet the shortage of homes, but to provide work for New Zealand tradesmen. When men were discharged at Lower Hutt, he brought the position created under toe notice of an officer of the company in charge of the housing construction. He had since received the assurance that the men would be taken on again. I Mr. Moulton said the fact still remained, however, that these men would have to work with “the axe over their heads”, all the time, while imported labour was able to carry oh under the guarantee. It was hard on some of the carpenters who had had long periods out of work, and who had a good deal of leeway to make up in their private economic positions. It was only fair to mention the offer of re-engagement of the men, but a distinction between guaranteed work for imported labour and uncertainty of the employment of local men was worth bringing under public notice. A man on the job said: “I’ve no objection to men from Home personally. After all, we fought side by side. However, there has been an industrial revival over there, and they should not be brought out here to share in any recovery which is rightfully ours.”