RAILWAY EMPLOYEES.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 473, 21 May 1890, Page 5

RAILWAY EMPLOYEES.

Wellington, May 16. The General Secretary of the Railway Employees’ Association, writing to the Commissioners, charges them with misleading public opinion re the threatened strike, there being no intention whatever to strike at present, and asks for definite replies to questions contained in letters of March 29th and April 2lst. The circular issued by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants asking for a ballot as to the strike, gives as the reason fox this step that there is a possibility that the Executive Committee may, in the near future, have to adopt extreme measures to compel the Commissioners to recognise the Society, or to enforce their views on the questions of boy labour, long hours, readjustment of wages, and piecework as laid down by the Conference. The Commissioners have issued a statement regarding the present rules, of which the following is a summary :—“ Permanent Way: Eight hours per day for fortyeight hours per week for the authorised daily wages, the regular hours of work being from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extra pay to labourers and tradesmen for overtime, subject to regulations issued from time to time. Locomotives running ten hours or 100 miles, at the option of the locomotive, superintendent, to count as a day's work for a driver and fireman ; overtime to be counted at the rate of time and a quarter. Traffic employees will be required to work all trains on advertised time-table without allowance for overtime, but as far as possible duties to be arranged to avoid overtime. As far as can be arranged, consistently with economy and public convevience, in the case of employees generally working time is not to exceed eight hours per day or forty-eight hours per week of six vi orking days. In the case of locomotive drivers and firemen working time as far as practicable to be limited to ten hours a day, or sixty hours per week of six working days. Men engaged in intermittent services, who are paid extra for overtime, as in the case of drivers and firemen, will not havo their whole time counted from first coming on duty until finally leaving, but only such time as the officer in charge may in each case determine may be fairly counted as working time.” Traffic employees, as a rule, are intermittent workers, and their duties cannot be arranged to bo performed continuously.. In their case extra pay is not, as a rule, given for overtime except for Sunday work. Allowance is made in another way when. there are long hours to be worked by individuals which are unavoidable. The men may have a day off a week, or may have long days and short ones alternately, so as to upproximate as closely as possible to the rule, that six days of eight hours’ continuous labour is the standard time. Maintenance men who are working eight hours a-day continuously are paid extra for night work between six p.m. and six a.m. at time and half. Regular night gangs who do not work through the day receive time and a-quaiter pay for work between six p.m. and six a.m. Sunday work is paid at time and half. Worshops’ hands are paid at the rate of an hour and a-quarter for every hour worked during the week over forty-eight hours. For work done between nine p.m. and six a.m., rate and a-half will be allowed for every hour so worked. On Sundays rate and a-lialf is allowed, provided full time (forty-eight hours) has been worked during tho week. At to day’s meeting of the Maritime Council, the secretary was instructed to wire to Mr Edwards, Genoral Secretary, of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, advising that representatives of employees be sent to Wellington, to meet the Commissioners and discuss any grievance which they have, and in tho event of their failing to obtain satisfaction in that way, then to lay the matter before Ministers. Christchurch, this day. Mr Edwards, secretary of tho Railway Employees’ Society, has published a statement in which he says “ A ballot is certainly being taken to obtain the feeling of the members with regard to forcing matters, but only after all pacific means by arbitration have failed. This the employees are perfectly entitled to do if they choose. It is their right to decide whether they shall or shall not sell their labour for so much. To say that boys have not been taken on to supersede men, is to say what is utterly false, for where men were formerly employed boys are taken on to fill vacancies. Men are being dispensed with in all directions, and dismissed and disrated for the most trivial things. I may mention a case of a guard of fourteen years’ service, who has been dismissed because a bundle, of old rotten butter boxes came out whilst he was putting it into his van, and the contents partly fell out upon the platform. I challenge the Commissioners to prove that fair allowance is made for overI time in any way whatever, with but few exceptions here and there. Allowing about one hour off for every six hours of overtime worked, is an example of the Commissioners’ sense of justice. What we are asking for is a reply from the Commissioners to the grievances we have laid before them, but in all their communications they studiously keep from this.” Mr Edwards, in a letter written to the Commissioners yesterday, states that the Railway Employees’ Society decline to hold a general conference in Wellington, and that such a deputation must consist purely of railway servants, inasmuch as compliance with such conditions would materially endanger the fair, fearless, and impartial investigation and discussion of the grievances under which all classes of railway servants are labouring at the present time, .and it must certainly reserve to itself the right to send such deputation as may seem to it most desirable.