Trades and the Workers

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 168, 6 October 1927, Page 13

Trades and the Workers

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BOXWOOD

UNION MEETINGS DUE Ferry Employees .. .. . M ... .► To-day Caretakers .. ... .. .. .. .. «... __ ... .. .. To-night. Electrical Workers ~~ .. To-night. Brickworkers .. „. ], ~ .. .. ... .. Oct. B.* Painters .. .. .. '. .. .. .. .. Oct. IQ. Storemen * ’ ** Oct. 11. Gas Employees Oct. 12. Labour Representation Committee .. Oct. 12. Plumbers’ Educational Oct. 12. Dairy Employees (afternoon; Oct. 13. Boilermakers .. .. .. Oct. 13.

The Mount Albert Borough Council has decided to look into possible work to absorb unemployed. In response to a letter from the Department of Labour this week the council left consideration of what should be done to a committee.

After a long wrangle and numerous exchanges of view, an agreement, it is understood, has been arrived at between the City Council and the Trarawaymen’s Union. The new conditions are practically on the same lines as the previous agreement, with slightly better wage adjustments in certain cases. The new agreement will, when it is completed, extend overJ:he next 18 months. Blacklaying Slack.—The bricklaying trade has suffered with the rest of the building trade from the lack of employment. It is estimated that 40 men cut of about „200 have been permanently out of work this year. This is a trade that never shows the real severity of its slump on the Labour Department’s returns. Buildings are big enough to see and the “bricky” usually goes round them and looks for work in preference- to hanging round the Labour Department.

The General Labourers’ Federation will hold its first annual conference in Auckland on Monday and succeeding days. There are a lot of remits forward for discussion, but the proceedings will not be reported in the Press. Delegates trill be present from all parts of the Dominion and the federation seems likely to step off in its career on the right foot. Mr. W. J. Rodgers, Mayor of Wanganui, and Mr. “Bob” Semple are among the delegates expected. * * * Gisborne Electricians.—A visit from Mr. M. O’Leary last week resulted in the organisation of Gisborne Electrical Workers. The employers are desirous of being heard before .their joinder as parties to the award and the case will come before the sitting of the Arbitration Court at Gisborne in November. The meetings held there were very large and proportionately enthusiastic, so that there is good ground for believing that the prospects there are very good. The district will come within the scope of the Waikaremoana power scheme.

Hindoo are held by the hairdressers that the amendment of the Shops and Offices Act will remove an awkward anomaly from the trade. A thorn in its side were the shops of Hindoos or Dalmatians in which a few men in the ostentation of partnership have evaded the old Act. The new Act, it is hoped, will put an end to this. It is the same dodge that Asiatics have been up to :in various other lines and if the loophope is not closed this time Parliament will have lost a golden opportunity for fairly refereeing the retail shops.

Barbers’ Half - Hoi id ay, self is not more dead than the old days when barbers’ shops were open on Saturday. Six years ago the Saturday half-holiday was adopted amid the tearful imprecations of the general body of employers who saw themselves ruined in prospect by it. Two years ago the employers made an effort to regain the open shop Saturday afternoons, but there seems now no chance that it will ever come back. And the majority of customers reclining in “the chair” under the kind hands and caressing small-talk of the good tradesman will sympathise with him in his Saturday half-holiday.

Storemen’s Holidays.—An interesting ca.se which will soon come before the local magistrates relates to the holidays for casual storemen. The award says that when a casual storeman has been engaged for 12 months he is to be regarded as a permanent employee, and when a permanent employee has been engaged for 12 months he is entitled to a week’s holiday. Since the present award has been in force the practice among employers has been to give a week’s holiday in respect of the first 12 months, brut of late the practice lias been changed, and casual men have to work 12 months to enter the category of permant employees and a further 12 months to gain the stipulated week’s holiday. An interpretation may soon be asked for from the Arbitration Court.

Rope Slings..-—One of the very loosely-worded clauses of the Electrical Workers’ Award is that regarding the provision of mats, gloves and lifebelts. The award merely demands that these be of the “best quality.” No

design or specification is detailed. The court has had the clause brought before it this week through the Auckland Power Board having resorted to a fearsome and crude relic of Tom Long as a lifebelt. The Waitemata Power Board, on the contrary, uses a leather belt. It seems obvious enough that however the Auckland Power Board’s appliance may be of “best Quality” hempen rope it is not a best quality lifebelt. As was pointed out to the court it can be more adequately described as a substitute. * * * Dame Fashion and Hairdressing.— Thanks to Paris or Sloan Street or common sense or whatever is distating present fashions in coiffure, the hairdressing trade has not been slack throughout these depressing times. Flair continues to grow and hairdressers continue to be busy and if the male trade has suffered at all by the recommissioning of the home razor that has been more than counterbalanced by the‘prevailing feminine fashion for cropped heads. Ladies' saloons are springing up in all directions and no special training seems to be necessary to those following that particular branch of the trade, smart girls picking the art up in a few weeks. Though they may be very deficient in the finer point sof style, they are able to satisfy the less exacting class of customer. But there is this noteworthy point that apparently women are prejudiced in favour of male hairdressers with a prejudice that is not being overcome. There is this anomaly in the trade now, that the feminine operators have no award and are not covered by the male hairdressers’ award. However, they seem quite satisfied undea? present conditions and seem to have no great anxiety to form a union.

Extending Shopgirls’ Hours.—There is a dqnger that the amendments to the Shops and Offices Act will produce a very unfortunate retrograde step in the retail shops. The suggested new clause extends the houx until which any boy or female under T lB may be employed to 40.30 p.m., as against 9.30 in the present Act. Half-past ten is a very late hour for such youthful workers, and high time they were under the parental roof. Considexdng all the “old women” who sit in our legislative halls it will be strange if tfce provision gets through. It is, moreover, directly contrary to the full weight of public opinion and a most

disheartening: step backwards. The hour originally settled in 190 S was nine o’clock, except for restauarants, and that hour was maintained until the 1921 Act. Why continual spectacular retrogression? If there is one clause in the amendments that goes unsponsored and unloved by any party it is the clause giving the right of appeal to a magistrate for exemption from closing hours. This elause which has been applied in the past has resulted in a chaotic position and none of the parties look on it with any favour at all. Neither the small shopkeepers nor the shop assistants trust the provision for a moment, for it has been found, with all due respect to the magisterial bench, that its occupants have landed the law at sixes and sevens, magistrates in one district doing the very opposite to wrfat magistrates in another district have adopted as their practice. As a result the clause has been most unsatisfactory.

Wages and Ownership.—Mr. Ramsay Muir has recently published a book, “America, the Golden.” in which he examines American industrialism. In os last chapter he deals with the wider distribution ot ownership: ”IS T o one who lias given much thought to the problem can have failed to roach the conviction that the root cause of social unrest is the maldistribution, not so much of income as of property or capital. By far the greater part of the capital equipment of every industrial nation belongs to a very small proportion of the population. “This state of things gives plausibility to the assertion that the nation is divided between a small owning class which lives mainly by owning, and a huge working class which labours for the benefit of the owning class. And although this is an inaccurate statement of the case, yet it is near enough to the facts to have the sting of truth in it. “Moreover, this state of things is apt to get worse as industry progresses. For every stage in industrial progress is marked by an increase of mechanism —that is to say, by the provision of a larger capital equipment for each unit of labour. Accordingly the proportion of the product that must necessarily go as payment for the use of capital must increase; and even if labour gets higher wages the disparity between its reward and that of capital must become more marked. “This is the process which has in fact been going on for a hundred years, and Socialism is a protest against it.”