Labour Notes.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 36, 1 December 1894, Page 11

Labour Notes.

HOME AND COLONIAL.

The Albert Hill works of the Darlington Steel and Iron Company, which had been established 35 years and employed 800 men, were closed on October 6 owing to slackness of trade. Some workmen at the Foxhill Tinplate works were recently fined £lO each for breach of contract by violating their agreement to work at 15 per cent below the standard wages. Thirty-nine workmen were summoned for a similar breach of contract. Mutual concessions were then made, the employers receiving £2OO compensation, and the workmen resuming at standard rates. The wrought nail makers of Staffordshire and Worcestershire, numbering about 3,000, returned to work on October 9, the masters having agreed to pay the advance claimed, which amounts to about 10 per cent, upon the rate paid before the strike commenced.

The Dawson Hill Manufacturing Company were lately summoned for not supplying their weavers with sufficient particulars. The inspector said that the chief fault was in regard to the length, which he found to he about five per cent, less than was stated. This would mean about £4OO per year to this firm. The defendants were fined 10s and costs in one case, and costs in two others. Mr Brunner has been giving his experiences of the working of the eight hours day at the Winnington Works. In November, 1889, the change was made, with a drop of 10 per cent, in wages. In January 1891, the reduction in wages was abandoned. After four years’s experience, it has been found that the men got the same wages for eight hours as they formerly got for twelve, but the cost per ton produced was not more than under the old system. The shortening of hours has been accompanied by a marked improvement in the health of the men. The result of Mr Brunner’s experiment seems to show that men will produce as much in eight hours as they will in twelve. If this be so (remarks the Daily Chronicle) the argument that a reduction of hours will lead to absorption of the unemployed is so far weakened. At the annual meeting of the Canterbury Employers’ Association, held in Christchurch on Monday last, the President said that the most pressing matter before the employers was the stand they should take towards the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, which, he was afraid, provided machinery for initiating disputes which would not otherwise have arisen. One undoubted injustice of the Act was the impossibility of equally enforcing the awards as between employers and employes. That Act having been passed the Association should bring itself into line with it so as not to allow trades unions any advantage in the appointment of members to the Board. The trend of restrictive labour legislation would be to cause all forms of manufacturing to be stayed until its scope was more clearly and urgently seen. Then it would be gone into on a large scale, in order that the Association should be strong enough to bear all the restrictions the Government and labour organisations put upon it. This would generally be by the use of cheap foreign capital, the interest of which would not remain with us.