Trades and the Workers

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 186, 27 October 1927, Page 13

Trades and the Workers

= BY

BOXWOOD

UNION MEETINGS DUE

vers ..... To-night October 31 Carpenters November 2

The Biscuit anti Confectionery Workers’ Union is holding a. dance and social this evening jn Hall. packing their toothbrushes for Wellington to protest against the Arbitration amendments: Mr. T. Bloodvvortii, Mr. J. p - Jolin - secretary of the DairyWorkers. find Mr. J. Liddell, secretary of the Tramwaymen’B Union. When Mr. E. J. Watson, secretary of Ate Bakers’ Union, was on his southern tour recently, he searched Rotorua high and low but could find only one unionist baker, all the other shops working on family arrangements. Mr. Watson proposes a northern tour about the Srst week in November. ■'To lower wages as a method of dealing with the industrial depression is suicidal,” said Mr. Seebohm Rowntree at the Liberal Summer School at Cambridge (England), recently in a speech on The Economy of High Wages ” “When we do so we reduce the purshasing power of 80 per cent, of our whole population, on whom we rely to purchase 70 per cent, of the goods we make. “The real problem we employers have to face in order to secure our right place in the world’s markets is to lower our costs of production and so sell at competitive prices. The awkward thing is we have got to lower labour costs while raising wages. The problem can only be tackled by running business so efficiently as to make it possible to raise wages and at the same time lower labour costs. The way must be found inside industry itself. All politics can do is to make it possible to remove trade barriers ” “Are British workers recovering thatJndustrial reasonableness which characterised their pre-war activities? They are,” writes Mr. W. G. Appleton, geeretary of the British General Fed-

eration of Trade Unions, in the “Weekly Dispatch.” “Anyone moving among the so-called rank and file discovers abundant evidence of changed opinions and wiser outlooks. Men and women are still, as al^ ay . 8, moved by rhetoric; tales of suffering, of evil conditions, or of unjustifiable oppressions still move them to compassion or anger, but their present attitude demands the flowers of sense rather than those of thoughtless or interested oratory. “To-day, outside the few- who hope to gain, financially and potiticallv, by the advocacy of wildcat schemes, all are desiring industrial peace rather than conflict. Should Dairy-Workers Rejoice? Dalry-faetory workers have little to thank the arbitration system for if one considers their wage of £ 4 Is a week of seven days and 60 hours. It seems now that they can contemplate what advantages they will have from being free from the Act, for if the amendments go through the union will have one more year to go before its award expires. Then perhaps having no penalties over their heads, dairy-factory workers may take some Christmas holidays, for instance. What a chaos would ensue in the dairying industry if that course were taken. The farmers who have .cried aloud for exclusion of the factory workers will find soon enough how much they were indebted to their old friend the Arbitration Act. One must exonerate a large section of the Auckland Farmers’ Union, which holds the exclusion of dairy workers from the Act to be a very serious mistake. Will the Moribund Awake •No one; regards it as a secret that the trade union movement to-day is in serious danger of rigor mortis. About 80 people were present in the Trades Hall at the protest meeting

against the arbitration amendments last evening. Considering the importance of the whole affair one can understand that the old hand unionists, who kne w the more virile days of the movement, were reduced nearlv to tears. The amendments, if passed into law, would wipe out the advance of 30 years. “But,” said Mr. T. Bloodworth, looking sadly round the “if this represents the result of thirty years of unionism, then there is precious little to wipe out.” He consid- ! ered that the Arbitration Act had ruined unionism. If this was the only j thing that was left of it then it was only left to give it a decent burial. Several others spoke in the- same strain, and Mr. G. C. Stone in a concluding speech, bewailed the lack of unity among the officials of the movement. After all, it takes a brick like the amendments to wake the workers up, and if the country can be saved from them, good may come from the very fact that they have been threatened. The New Assessor Scheme The one topic in the Labour movement this week i 3 the Arbitration amendments. The Trades Union Secretaries’ Association held a meeting on Tuesday afternoon and added their condemnation to the general chorus. There is a provision which more especially affects union secretaries, and that is the alteration of the constitution of the court to provide for assessors who must have been engaged in the industry in which the dispute has arisen, within the last preceding 12 months. Where does a union secretary come in under that clause? It would seem that he is excluded from serving his union in the capacity of arbitrator on the court. Nothing could be more unfair to unions than the exclusion of their secretaries, who, from long experience in the industry and the trust in which they are held, are exceptionally qualified to act on the Court. More to the point is the fact that they are the sole persons on the workers’ side who are removed from the fear of victimisation. The whole aspect of the amendments from that viewpoint is rotten. The trade union movement cannot afford to forget that, notwithstanding the present clause which pretends to protect assessors and other workers who have taken part in conciliation and arbitration proceedings, there has been only one successful case fought. And in that instance the employer was fined—one shilling. Happily enough the Employers’ Fed-

eration, on the statement of Mr. T. O. Bishop, finds as many objections to tlie new arbitrator scheme as the workers’ side. From what putrid egg the whole idea was hatched is rather a mystery.