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DOCKERS ONCE GOT 4½d.

NOW IS 6d PER HOUR.

IN NEW ZEALAND, 2s 2d,

The cablegrams announce that the English dockers are now to receive the 12s per day for which they struck.

A LOndon-bred man now in Dunedin thus moralises on the news: When I was a boy my duties took me about the docks, and I remember well the scenes there of a morning. It was nothing uncommon for a thousand men to rush to the gates of a dock when they guessed that the man in charge was about to appear on his stand overhead to call for labour. The men. knew that not one in then of the applicants would be wanted, so they struggled for positions in which they would be likely to catch his eye. What were they competing for? The noble sum of fourpence halfpenny per hour! That was in or about the year 1882. Now, forty-two years later, they are to get 12s per day, or Is 6d per hour. Something worth while, an increase to that extent, but if it is unequally high, the inequality is not so great or so mis. chievous as was the unequal smallness of the per hour.lt looks to me as if the English dockers are now, in regard to wages, somewhat on a level with their New Zealand equivalents, the waterside:-s, who get 2s 2d per hour "In the days of which I am speaking the Londoni carters', common wage was 17s 6d per week, and some ; of them had to turn out at 6 o'clock in thu morning, whilst I have seen them finishing up at 8 and 10 in the evening, A man in charge- of carters was by them deemed a prince, with his 30s a week. "Think, too, of the miserable pay of sailors. Able seamen could be gat for £2 10s per month —expert hands, who hazarded their lives twenty times in the, course of a voyage. "Thank goodness those days of slavery and misery are over. They will never return. There is, however, something to be done in regard to the pay of ocean-going sailors of the upper grades. The officers of passenger liners have had'their wages and conditions made tolerable, but the men. who are in charge of tramp cargo steamers are poorly paid, and heavily laden with responsibility. I was speaking recently to the master of a 5,000-tonner, and in'"* the course of conversation mentioned that some, skilled workers in New Zealand could command £1 per day, whereupon he remarked that that was more than he got. It appears to me a bit lopsided that a man who has to navigate and think out y the control and the : working of a ship of that size is worth a little* more than the man who lays bricks or does any sort of work by plans that are supplied to him.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/SNEWS19240314.2.21

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Shannon News, 14 March 1924, Page 4

Word count
Tapeke kupu
483

DOCKERS ONCE GOT 4½d. Shannon News, 14 March 1924, Page 4

DOCKERS ONCE GOT 4½d. Shannon News, 14 March 1924, Page 4

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