Trades and the Workers

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 428, 9 August 1928, Page 10

Trades and the Workers

By •

"ARBITER”

UNION MEETING DATES

Thursday, August 8 (to-night) Thursday, August 8 (to-night) Friday, August 9 Monday, August 13 Tuesday, August 14 Wednesday, August 15 The Auckland Trades and Labour Council has been invited to attend the official opening of the Wellington Trades Hall on Saturday. The structure has cost a lot of money; let’s hope it does a commensurate service to the community. The apprenticeship committee of the general engineers meets to-night to discuss breaches of the apprenticeship orders as revealed by circulars sent to employers recently by the secretary, Mr. R. F. Barter. The apprenticeship committee of the motor mechanics met yesterday for the same purpos-e. Mr. A. H. Dixon, secretary of the ftirniture workers, who has been through the Poverty Bay district, reports .reduced membership through unemployment. Many members have gone on to relief works; others are working short time. In Auckland the position of furniture workers has improved a little during this week. Reports from the King Countrv do not encourage M.r. E. J. Phelan, secretary of the timber workers, as things are dead in the outlying districts. Mr. Phelan believes that if the Government possessed sufficient courage to say immediately, “All timber under 12 by 12 will be banned from entry into New Zealand for 12 months,” the trade will boom with the employment of thousands of men. He asserts further that this Dominion would never go back to sawn timber importations. Caretaker’s Sunday Work Application for an unofficial interpretation of the Sunday and holiday clauses of tile Caretakers and Cleaners’ Award recently, and from the reply which he received from the Arbitration Court, Mr. J. X-’urtell, secretary of the union, assumes that workers in this category cannot be worked on Sunday, according- to the Shops and Offices Act, and further that men who were worked on holidays are entitled to time and a—half rates. The scope of these clauses does not affect many workers in Auckland, however. Not a Fair Thing There is a noticeably smaller queue around the Labour Unemployment Bureau during these mornings. Some of this is due to the absorption of men; some of it on the other hand is on account of the disinclination of men to leave the cities. It is noticeable that many of the single men would rather loaf about at home than get out into the country to a job and enable the married man to keep his wife and family above the starvation line by picking up what is going in the town. It is obvious the.re is insufficient to keep everyone going in town: why not face the facts as they are instead of moaning about causes? An Icy Reply How is this for an effective reply? Mr. C. R. Morden, who contested as a . Socialist North Hammersmith and Finsbury, has resigned from the party. He wrote to Mr. Ramsay Macdonald: '} am setting more and more to believe that the Conservative policy is the best for the \-*>lfa.re of this country and the Empire, and wish to follow the progressive and moderate leadership of Mr. Baldwin, who, you will no doubt agree, is an honest man with the good of his country and the Empire at heart.” Mr. Macdonald replied: “I am not at all surprised to have your letter You will remember that you have always been an uncertain person, wigglewaggling to the right and to the left. Japan Looks Us Over "While the ships of the Japanese squadron were in Auckland, one of the Officers. K. Abiru, showed a nealthy interest in trade unionism and industrial movements in this country, fje visited the Labour Department and the Trades Hall, and secured from the heads there quite a parcel of useful facts about things in New Zealand Abiru appears to be a student of social and economic problems, and incidentally mentioned that, although Labour was not well represented in Parliament in the Land of the Rising Sun, greater things were hoped for as the outcome of general tendencies toward Labour which were being shown at the present time. Mr. J. Purtell, president of the Trades and Labour Council here, was shown over the ships. * * * The Way Not to Win! This is the sort of stuff that is going over in the “Pan-Pacific Worker,” published in Shanghai, and the official organ of the Pan-Pacific Secretariat, to which the A.C.T.U. has pledged Australian workers: “The relatively well organised Australian trade union movement has been displaying a degree of militancy, particularly in the transport and metal industries, and efforts are correctly being made to develop and strengthen national organisations around our affiliated organisation, the Australasian Council of Trade Unions. We must eradicate pacifist tendencies in our effort to combat Imperialistic war, and remove all illusions regarding the possibilities of constitutionalism in the workers’ struggles against the employers, and in the so-called Labour Governments. Compulsory arbitration is an indirect method of class collaboration and has a dampening effect upon the fighting spirit of the workers.” A recent issue of “The Communist,” the official organ of the Australian Communist party, refers to direct action as the basis of trade union tactics, and describes direct action as boycott, strike, street demonstration, , seizure of factories, uprisings, and. 1 other revolutionary activity. Labour and Militarism Some pleasantries have been exchanged in Parliament during last week over one of the fundamental Labour planks—the abolition of compulsory military training. In explaining Labour’s view, Mr. P. Fraser said in the House that the question, must be divided into two parts, the ctfie defence, the other compulsion. Jt was to compulsion they objected, -and he was one who believed that when a person was prepared to sacrifice h<is liberty and even life for conscience anke, then the lesson of history was thfat it was best to let that person go hit? way. The Defence Department had j.iot shown very much common sense i/i prosecuting a number of PresbyteijiHn divinity students who read Holy Wlrit in a way that would not permit thejm to participate in military training. He thought that in the light of the advancement made in chemical and mechanical warfare our system of military training was out of date, and he wanted the Minister to give the ‘House some information as to what steps were being taken in New Zealand to cope with the new phases that were developing. Even Mr. Fraser, with his knowledge of human nature, however, will concede that it does not do to give too much away to super-conscientious people. So marry consciences are manufactured if the circumstances warrant it.

.. . . Plumbers’ Educational . . Rope and Twine Workers Curriers Painters Storemen Plasterers Putting Things in Order In order to set the economic forces of things right, British Labour, in its new programme, proposes: “To convert industry step by step, and with due regard to the special needs and varying circumstances of different occupations, from a sordid struggle for personal gain into a cooperative undertaking carried on for the service of the community and amenable to its control. “To extend rapidly and widely those forms of social provision—education, public health, housing, pensions, the care of the sick, and maintenance during unemployment—in the absence of which the individual is the sport of economic chance and the slave of his environment. “To establish peace and freedom in the world by removing the root causes of war, by substituting arbitration and international agreement for militarism and the use of force, and by actively supporting the League of Nations in both its political and economic activities with the object of turning the energies of the nations from the destructive arts of war to the constructive arts of peace. World Coal Conference In view of the serious hardship endured in many coal producing countries, the passage of this resolution by the executive committee of the International Miners’ Congress at Nimes seems appropriate: “After hearing the discussion on the coal problem, the Congress asks the International Labour Office and the Economic Section of the League of Nations to convene a world conference of the coal-producing countries, and that the International Federation of Miners haying defined their point of view appoint to that conference delegates who would be on a footing of equality with the others to submit the miners’ policy on the coal problem generally.” The congress also unanimously adopted a resolution reaffirming the necessity for the nationalisation of the mining industry. Provoking’ Drift If nothing is done with the revision of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act during the current session of Parliament, the workers in the agricultural and pastoral industries will have another year of security under the jurisdiction of the court. There is a serious threat of their being removed from the scope of the Court, and the move of the Government to delay any definite action till their strength is discerned after the elections, is merly procrastination in the face of a problem that has to be tackled. After all—and the relative importance of the dairy industrv in the country’s progress is admitted—there is no reason why the workers on farms and in butter factories should be compelled to work greater hours and under worse conditions than those in other trades. The Prime Minister deplores the drift to the towns. We all do. But why provoke this drift by cutting down the standard of those in the country by giving them a 56-hour week for an average wage of £4 Is weekly? Everyone should, in the interests "of health receive at least one full dav off in seven; dairy workers get nothing. In Queensland the hours are restricted to 44, and the wage is a minimum of £4 l.>s weekly for general hands, no more Uian eight hours being worked in a