TEMPLE OF LABOUR

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 62, 4 November 1931, Page 4

TEMPLE OF LABOUR

may be closed up CRISIS FACES TRUSTEES OF SYDNEY'S TRADES HALL. UNIONS BEHIND WITH RENTS SYDNEY, Saturday. The Trades Hall, the Goulburn Street Temple of Labour and cornerstone of the industrial Labour movement of Australia, is facing such a financial crisis that is everi possible the doors may close. So few of the unions established at the Trades Hall are paying their rents that the Trades Hall Association is not receiving sufficient income to mteet its administration and interest commitments. The position is further aggravated by the fact that many of the unions are insisting on being given the benefit of the Government's 22! per cent. reduction of rent legislation, despite the fact that they are, in some cases, months in arrears. A meeting of the Trades Hall Association is to be held during the week to review the position thoroughly. It is likely that an appeal will be made to the unions to play the game, and place their own hall and headquarters on a business basis. Some of the unions are paying rent regularly, but others, with militant reputations, and proud- of the number of .men they have sent to Parliament, are making little attempt to do so. No Wages. In some cases the failure is due to the closing of the Government Savings Bank, while some unions have been so hit by unemployment among their members that secretaries and organisers, for weeks at a- time, have had to go without pay or on short commons. Nearly all the Unions at the Trades Hall have shares in the Building. Not one, however, as far as can be ascertained, has put actual cash into it. The cash has been found by the Eight-Hour Committee, the fairy God-mother of the Labour movement. It has been the custom for' the Eight Hour Committe, out of proflts from the Art Union, to pay the money into the Trades Hall Associ.ation funds, and to issue shares to unions affiliated, ' with the ultimate objeet of having the ownership of the property vested in the unions that use it. Evil Days. But the Eight Hour Committee has fallen on bad timesy, and it has only been by very strenuous work that it has been able to square the ledger and secure the success of this year's drawing. It was suggested that, to get the Trades Hall out of trouble, the' Eight Hour Committee should be given the right to run a £10,000 lottery, but permission from the Government could not be obtained.