THE WORKING MEN'S CLUB.

NZ Truth, Issue 64, 8 September 1906, Page 4

THE WORKING MEN'S CLUB.

Elsewhere will be found the complaints of two ex-employees of the above institution on the subject of excessive hours and duties and inadequate pay. This paper holds no brief against the Wellington Working Men's Club, and bears it no ill-will, but its columns are always open to people who have a reasonable grievance to air and no other medium by which to reach the public ear. "Truth" is told that a certain section of the old management is endeavorinpr. m a spirit of revenge and self-interest, to do all the injury it possibly can to the Club and its new executive. That is as may be ; but it cuts no ice m the matter under discussion. What, interests this paper, as the mouthpiece of the down-

trodden and the sweated workers, is the irrefutable statements of several ex-employees of the Club as to the hours the servants of this ultra-la-bor organisation are expected to toil and the payment tendered m return. If the labor organisations whose members go to make the bulk of the roll of the Working Men's Club, knew of a private employer who paid a man 7<d an hour for night work, they'd be at him like tigers, with the whole forces of the Arbitration Court and public opinion at their back. Yet here, m their own case they "wink the other eye" and, like Brer Rabbit, "Lie low and say nuffln." The Working Men's. Club undoubtedly does the heaviest bar trade m Wellington and it enjoys privileges that no hotel possesses, by which that trade is greatly extended. Not unreasonably or improperly, from a liberal point of view, but still m a way to give it great advantages over the publicans, who are apparently looked upon as the legitimate victims of the law and the enemies of mankind. This being the case renders it still less defensible that the Club should so shockingly overwork and underpay its night-porters or any of its servants. Instead, it should set a shining example to other employers of similar labor, and if the new manager from England cannot see things jn this light, from want of the educational advanta-gfas of living under the Southern Cross, and if his : committee is too tonev and supine to teach him better, then the sooner a general vote of the members shows him his error the better for the status of labor m Wellington and New Zealand at large.