Trades and the Workers

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 688, 13 June 1929, Page 7

Trades and the Workers

By

"ARBITER"

MEETING DATES

Thursday, June 13 (tonight) .. Plumbers’ Educational Friday, June 14 Carriers Monday, June 17 Hairdressers Monday, June 17 Furniture Trades Tuesday, June 18 Plumbers Wednesday, June 19 W.E.A.

A meeting of trade union officials is being held today with the object of raising further funds for the miners and the timber workers in Australia. * * *

meets this month a petition will be sent through the Parliamentary Labour Party so that evidence may be taken before a Select Committee of the House and the whole question discussed.

According to statistics just issued, close on 1,000 employees are engaged in the breweries of New Zealand and their annual wage bill amounts to £277,000. The value of their products is given as £1,380,803. Engineers’ Dispute After many months of weary negotiation the settlement of the general engineers’ dispute is not yet arranged. Mr. R. F. Barter, the Auckland secretary of the Amalgamated Engineers’ Union, will leave on Sunday evening for Christchurch, where endeavours will bo made to reach an agreement on the question of a comprehensive award. The moulders, boiler-makers and the engineers are involved. Bottle-Making The glassworks at Penrose have started up with one furnace, and about 70 men are employed. It is anticipated that, if the demand increases through the winter, the other furnace will be lit, and the workers’ roll-call swelled to about 120. Competition in the bottle industry has been exceptionally keen of late, and prices have had to be kept well down on account of the readiness of the various supplying firms to meet the market requirements. Confectionery Workers A union has been registered in Christchurch of the biscuit and confectionery workers, and application will shortly be made for a Dominion award to cover this class of employee. Application for this probably will bo heard in the South. It is hoped by the workers’ representatives that a 44liour week will be the outcome of the conciliation proceedings. At present the weekly duration is 48 hours for male adults and 45 for female workers.

Record of “Conciliation” The Conciliation Council, by sitting for three months in different parts of tho Dominion on the watersiders’ dispute, is claimed to have broken all records in an endeavour by all parties to avoid an appeal to the Arbitration Court. This factor is the biggest indictment of our arbitration system. Both sides of a dispute are perpetually in fear that a point will be worked on them by the court or through the court, and instead of being a tribunal for the equitable settlement of genuine industrial disputes, the court becomes an organisation based upon fear and distrust, and leading to continuous undercurrents of industrial strife. When the watersiders finally settle up and the union members survey the bill of costs of their side, they might have something to say on their own behalf. No Labouring Jobs There is not much doing for labourers at the moment. A new wool-store is projected, but the speed with which these structures are erected

One point which will be raised by the workers as a claim for better wages and conditions is the benefits conferred upon the employers by the tariff protection in the 1927 adjustment of the Customs schedule. So much difference has the tariff made to the imported confectionery that at least one traveller for English sweets has come before “Arbiter’s” notice as having been forced off the road. On the other hand it is gratifying to see that local confectionery is being used extensively among a people who will have sweets whatever else is sacrificed in the economic pinch. * * # Dominion Unemployed Figures up to May say it is a hard winter economically. There has been a seasonal rise in the persons without employment, the statistician tells us, as indicated by the unfilled applications on the Government books. On May 13 these applications numbered 3,335, as against 3,211 on April 15, whereas between the corresponding dates last year the number increased from 2.534 to 3,095. It is significant that, although the seasonal March-April rise has not been so sharp this year, the mid-May number is 240 above what it was last 3-ear. A goodly proportion of these registered unemployed men—as well as many hundreds unregistered—is in Auckland, where the various authorities are still bearing the burden which rightly belongs to Southern cities and country towns. Court’s Decisions Unwelcome About GO members of trade union executives were asked at a meeting last week to seek a Government inquiry into the methods of the Ai-bi-tration Court in fixing the award con ditions of the workers throughout New Zealand. In the light of recent awards, all of which went against the men, and many of which were alleged to have been against the weight of evidence, the meeting passed a resolution bringing the court’s conduct before the authorities. A committee of three has been deputed to circularise the Prime Minister, the Minister of Labour and all Labour organisations, acquainting them of the decision, and seeking their support to an inquir}', and the possible removal of Mr. Justice Fraser from the Bench. It is possible that when Parliament

now, and the class of labour and material used in their erection, does not give the labourer as much chance as he used to have. About 140 men are employed on the Auckland RailwayStation job, which is handling far fewer than was anticipated at the outset. It is noteworthy that the theatre now being erected in Civic Square was one of the most beneficial jobs to the labourers that has been done in recent months. All told, it is estimated that something like 400 men received a week or a fortnight’s work there. Most of that work is now completed, of course, as the upper structure is now being gone on with, but it was good for the workers while it lasted. His Home Town What constitutes an Aucklander? In the present-day struggle for jobs this query is of more than usual import. It is fair that genuine Aucklanders should have preference over outsiders in whatever work is going, though the exactment of reliable residential data is a most difficult process. The other day a local authority in Napier packed off to Auckland a man who, they claimed, was an Aucklander, because he was born in Auckland 42 3-ears ago—though he had not seen this „city since his childhood days. The local authority to. whom he was sent ver3 T correctly decided that, as charity essentially begins at home, this was too much to expect. So the “Aucklander” was packed back to his city-by-adop-tion—Napier.