Trades and the Workers

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 150, 15 September 1927, Page 9

Trades and the Workers

============== —BY

UNION MEETINGS DUE Boilermakers To-night. Furniture Workers Sept. 19 Hairdressers Sept. 19 Engineers Sept. 20 Plumbers Sept. 20 Plasterers Sept. 21 Carpenters Sept. 21

The Auckland sittings of the Arbitration Court begin on October 3.

The Gasworkers’ Union held its quarterly meeting last evening. A large attendance of union members was present.

The combined branches of the Labour Party in Auckland are holding a fancy dress ball and card tournament in Scots Hall on September 2S. Prizes are to be awarded for the dresses.

Accommodation for 20 used to bring boarding-houses within the scope of the private hotel workers’ award, but the new award this week, in addition to other favourable clauses, reduced the requirements to accommodation for 16.

The annual meeting of the Gasworkers’ Provident Fund will be held on Wednesday next. The scheme will then be wound up for the year and the division of the surplus will be announced. The annual winding up is required under law. Labour Day is brewing up well. A good response has been forthcoming to- the collections. The usual procession, which once was such a feature of the great Labour holiday, has been discontinued for this year, but the usual programme of sports and a social day will stand.

In terms of the old parlour game, the search for a basis of a new agreement between the Tramwaymen’s Union and the Tramways Committee of the City Council is growing “hot-

Wife: “Yes, the condition of the workers has greatly improved. Remember that you yourself used to have to work on Sundays!” —Journal Amusant, Paris. ter and hotter.” It is understood that the assessors of the union recently met th© representatives of the council to find a basis of settlement. As a result a general meeting of the workers possibly will be held early next week. The Maori House. —Sensitive Auckland folk will hope that no copies of Auckland newspapers of next Tuesday come under the eye of H.R.H. the Duke of York. There has been a long wrangle between parties to the dispute over “The Maori House,” a carved miniature which was presented by the City Council to the Duke on the occasion of his visit. Both sides being adamant, the Magistrate’s Court is to settle the claim for wages brought by the carver. The case will probably be heard next Tuesday. More Wiremen. The ceaseless stream of electrical workers that take the single hurdle for wiremen’s licences prompts one to feel that sooner or later something must be done to aid the man who, with greater asisduity or longer experience, is advanced into the higher mysteries of the electrical trade. In the first place the standard of the present examination is too low. Too many regard it as a jest and a triviality, and perhaps they have some good grounds for so doing. A stiffer hurdle would be all in the interests of the trade and those who are served by it. A cascade of names of successful candidates, or should one say applicants, for wiremen’s licences was poured out by the examining board last week. The interests of all concerned lie in making two examinations, the first for wiremen’s licences and the second for registered electricians. There is at present no discriminating value in the system. A man who passes gets a wireman’s licence, and can stick to it till the trump of doom, but even if he lasts that long and gains more knowledge of liis trade every day he will never be granted any further recognition. Daylight Baking.—The fight for daylight baking has begun another round with the Introduction of Mr. J. McCombs’s Daylight Baking Bill into the Parliamentary arena.- The bill has been referred to the Labour Bills Committee so that the old round of evidence giving will soon be begun again. Mr. McCombs’s Bill proposes the prohibition of baking between 8 o’clock and 5 o’clock, whereas in previous cases the workers have urged the cessation of work between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m. The committee of the Auckland Bakers’ Union looked over the proposals yesterday.

The fight for daylight baking has been long and arduous. New South Wales adopted it after a decade of controversy and to-day Victoria is the only State in the Commonwealth which has not followed suit. At one time daylight baking was secured by agreement in all parts of the Dominion except Auckland and "Wellington. With the advent of the ..Dominion award the cessation was lost and a 46-hour week replaced it.

There Is no very logical reason behind the employers’ opposition to daylight baking. It is most possibly dictated more by inter-trade jealousy and supicion than anything else. The Tragedy of Timber.—Timber workers ivho looked to the Government for bread have been tossed a stone. The revised timber tariffs have proved only a half-hearted effort to resuscitate the half-strangled timber trade and will give very little cause for excessive joy to the owners of the 31 millions of capital that is sunk in the industry or to 30,000 people whose lives are bound up with its prosperity Second only to farming timber-mill-ing is the greatest wage-distributing industry in the Dominion. In health it is one of the greatest contributors to the prosperity of the country. To protect these factors it is imperative that a suitable tariff should be imposed on sawn timber otherwise milling, which has dwindled to a shadow of its former self, must die. The duty in force lost all pretensions to be protective. Sixty years ago the first duty, Is a hundred was imposed and in 1871 that was raised to 2s. Since then the tariff has never been increased. At that time in the Wairarapa building timbers were selling at 6s 6d at the mills, royalties were Id and 3d and wages 5s 6d and 6s 6d a day. Freights and taxation were at

BOXWOOD

a correspondingly low figure. The duty then was equal to 33 1-3 per cent, of sale prices. Taking present figures in the Wellington region royalties have increased 21 times, wages and freights are three times as high. It is often argued that in a short time any great protective tariff would react on the cost of living, but against that we may set the enormous waste of capital and idle labour that is typical of the trade to-day. Protect mills and enable them to get going again paying wages, providing employment and circulating the magic stream of money in the backblocks and no one will be the loser. Unemployment Insurance. —Speaking of unemployment insurance, which for some groundless reason gained the unsavoury name of “the dole/ Mr. C. H. Wickens, Statistician to the Commonwealth of Australia, who returned from Europe a fortnight ago, said that it had been subject to a lot of unjust criticism. “The unemployment insurance system in Britain has eased the transition stage between the war period and now,” said Mr. Wickens. “Improvements have been made in the system, and there is now little possibility of fraud. Every person who wishes to draw this insurance must register at a bureau, and must take the first position that is available.” Unemployment insurance was handled as a business, said Mr. Wickens, and was not merely a payment from the Exchequer. Immediately after the end of the reat War, beginning in November, 1918, and lasting for 12 months, a special “out-of-work donation” had been granted by the British Government to those who could not find employment. , This had been a direct payment, and was known as “the dole/ and the name had remained even when the payments had been put on the basis of insurance benefits. Twenty million pounds had been paid out in these 12 months, but by the beginning of May, 1926 the deficit had been reduced to £7,000,000. Then came the general strike, followed by the coal strike, which caused a great deal of unemployment, and payments rose. In seven months the deficit had increased by £14,000,000, and by the end of last year there was a debit balance of £21,000,000. Considering the coal strike unemployment, this figure was not considered excessive. “This system of unemployment insurance, or one like it, is in force in most countries/ confined Mr. Wickens, “and such an insurance scheme could well be adopted in Australia. If the act were framed on the British Act, it would be difficult for any person who did not deserve the benefits to receive payment.