PREFERENCE AMONG WATERSIDE WORKERS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16487, 28 February 1914, Page 13

PREFERENCE AMONG WATERSIDE WORKERS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Your leader in Thursday’s paper on this subject, so far as iu refers to Lyttelton, is typical of your stand in this matter. Your prejudices inspire you to seek information either from a tainted source or insufficient to deal with the true position of affairs. The reading public will naturally think you have put the facts fairly before them, but ■ I can give you- a few facta that will put a totally different aspect to the question. During the period in which the; recent agitation has arisen, .say for the. last two weeks, there have been employed in Shaw, Savill and Albion Company’s wool store twenty-six men, ,of whom nine wero now Arbitration Unionists artd seventeen ex-strikers, and most of these men have drawn from £9 13s to £lO for the two weeks’ work. In tho New Zealand Shipping Company’s wool store the proportions of new Arbitrationists and ex-strikers are about the same, and they likewise have made good money. AVhich way does the preference lio, then ? Probably what happened on tho morning instanced by Mr AVilson of tho excess workers engaged from the now; Arbitration Union was that the best of the ex-strikers were engaged on the lasting jobs in port, so on the basis of merit, which Mr AVilson claims should bo the standard of selection, L ho employers had to take a majority of the new Arbitrationists.

No, the trouble, of course, is that through the egregious folly of the waterside workers allowing themselves to bcome entangled in the Federation of Labour schemes and being led by paid agitators, there has been a. considerable addition to the capable workers in this and other ports in the dominion, and the only thing that will conduce to industrial peace in these ports is for the run-awav firemen and wasters who have settled there, and who are the turbulent element, to go back to their firc-stoking or voluntarily “deport” themselves to other climes. •Then the honest, capable workers, of whom there are many belonging to both the new and the old unions, would get * decent living.—l am, etc., EYE-WITNESS. Opawa, February 27. (All we suggested was that tlie honest, capable workers should “ get a decent living.”—Ed. “L.T.”)