Untitled

Oamaru Mail, Volume II, Issue 545, 30 January 1878, Page 2

A strike of the railway employes engaged on the wharf occurred last evening. We have taken the trouble to ascertain the cause, which is related by one of them as follows :—" We have been workin" 12 or 13 hours a-day for about 4 days in the week, 8 hours being the duration of our working day. All time above that was overtime, for which we were paid, by the Government Is, and by the owners of the steamers (id., per hour. Last month the overtime which had hitherto been paid by the Railway Department was stopped without any notice having 'been} given the men of the intention to do so. The railway authorities had previously deducted a month's overtime without assigning any reason for their extraordinary conduct. Under a sense of the wrong that was being done us ; and, having worked during the past fortnight a considerable amount of overtime in the hope that the matter would receive reconsideration, and that we should get paid for it, but finding that it was not forthcoming, we knocked oil' at 5 o'clock last night, determining that, rather than be compelled to work overtime without; any other remuneration than the ordinary weekly wage of L2 10s., we would throw up our sitnttions. Immediately on Mr. | Smith hearing that we had stopped work, j he informed the wharf manager that our services would be no lunger required. We wiah to contradict a statement made yesterday, to the effect that on the" previous day Mr. Smith had informed us that if .Kr .worked after 5 o'clock he would see us pai'-d-" There is something radically vime Bi.v£i&isrherc. If these men were engaged for a weekly waire of L2 10s., with an understanding that they were to be paid Is. per hour for every hour overtime, it is a shame, and mean in the extreme, to withhold their overtime without ev.-n a hint of the intention to do so. " The labourer is worthy of his hire," and it was just as much the duty of the Government to pay tht.se men for their overtime as it \ was to pay their weekly wage of L2 10s. If work is wanted to be done well and expeditiously, it should be paid for. Surely the L2 10s. weekly is not intended as stitiicient remuneration for men who work twelve or thirteen hours a day. 3len in the Railway Department, who are only useful for their ornamentation and bungling, and who could be dispensed

with to advantage, evidently absorb all the emolument, and other poor beggars with families are left to grind out a miserable existence by working 12 or 13 hours a day for L2 10s. per week.