The Daily News. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13. WHO'S BOSS?

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 222, 13 January 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13. WHO'S BOSS?

One finds it in one's heart to be sorry for the poor over-worked carpenter 0/ Wellington, who, like other people, has hitherto, worked five days and a-half a week. As the carpenter is, of course, the most important person in any community, it follows that the demands for a new award made by the Wellington Union must be conceded or revolution and disaster will follow. The Union demands for its members, besides a full holiday on Saturday, an increase of fourpence per hour, and asks in no uncertain voice for a larger control of the person who is sometimes facetiously referred to as the "master." The employer under the conditions demanded would have to ascertain that each gentleman who condescended to work for him for five days a week must be a unionist, otherwiseno job. In fact, the alleged "master" is not expected to look upon an applicant for work from the point of view of his skill, but from the point of view of his unionism. The Union does not examine applicants for tickets as to their ability. It is sufficient that they can pay the dues. Carpenters vary. Everyone knows that many men of all trades steadfastly refuse to become unionists, depending only 011 their own skill and ability to obtain and keep work. The Union under the proposed award would shuffle the true carpenter with the wood-spoiler, and the wood-spoiler would emerge from the shuffle on the same plane as the best man in the pack. Which, is all very in- i teresting and modern and ridiculous, especially in conjunction with the price of timber and protection, and those other dear delights that make New Zealand such an advanced country. Some of these days a carpenters' union will catch a man working and will fine him for being such a fool, or a stray "chips" may be captured on Saturday morning without his frock-coat and bell-topper and be relegated to oblivion by the union. Carpenters' wives should be interested in the new demands, and might form a union to demand that Monday and Tuesday in each week be set apart for women's holidays. In New Zealand carpentering is emphatically not one of the fine arts, and when that building boom occurred in Wellington every man who could push a saw and drive a nail rushed to the weatherboards and swore he was a "tradesman." And no carpenters' union of them all would deny the soft impeachment as long as the wood-spoiler showed a ticket and paid up. It is patent that the Wellington Union is not partial to superlatively skilled men, because it demands that piece-work shall be abolished. That is to say, a skilled man—who might not even be a unionist —could probably earn double the wages that the wood-spoiler could gather at "piece," and the union desires that all wood-workers shall give up being ambitious and settle down to one uninteresting level of mediocrity., The Union practically says: "Don't dare to excel in your trade, or there will be a row." There cannot be any serious objection to the demand that the "boss" shall boil the billy at lunch time, and if the carpenters had thought of it they might have insisted that the boss should be ready with their coats, collars, bicycles, tram-fares, and so on, at five o'clock. The organiser naively remarked that "there were very few carpenters out of work at the present time," and very naturally the present time is the best time for treading on the brisket of the wage-payer. We have not the slightest sympathy with the hard-hearted builder who has made the poor little carpenters work for five and a-half days every week, just as if they were common men like clerks or railway porters, newspaper folk and shopkeepers. The powerful organisation that may refuse to build any more houses in Wellington, if that award does not pan out satisfactorily, might help other folk to share in the delirious joy of two days' holiday out of seven. They might, for instance, demand the cessation for one day pei- week of the daily papers on the ground that printers and those sort of inferior folks should have some time to wear their best clothes. The influence of a person who can nail on a weatherboard without faintingand work for forty whole •hours a. week without falling dead, should be used for the general betterment of society. There can be no denial of the carpenters' contention that each person engaged in a specific trade is worth as much as the other fellow. There should be no gradations. The man who can build a staircase should not be allowed to earn more money than the man who nails the roof on, and we are not sure whether a person who can hang a door shouldn't be put in the same class as tire architect who planned the Bank of New Zealand, or the Public Trust build-' ing. Anyhow, the man who nails the roof on had better not he guilty of ivying to learn to build a staircase, for there is no necessity for it. Bring these stupid follows who have pridp in a specialty down to the level of the newest woodspoiler. That is the object to be achieved. As for apprentices, why teach hoys anything? This is wrong and destructive

of unionism. A proportion of one apprentice to five journeymen is absurd. These youngsters will be growing up and. will do somebody out of a job. And while "few carpenters are unemployed," for heaven's sake don't let any oversea wood-workers land, and if one does stray in give him the straight tip that unionism and not skill is the chief considera-' tion. And if the gentlemen who have it in their hands to make or mar the new demands fail to concede them, it were better that they had never been born. The Wellington carpenters may wreck the Government if they don't get a whole holiday on Saturday, may refuse to work wood and become civil engineers if absolute preference is not conceded, and may reduce Wellington folk to the necessity of living in tents if they don't get Is Sd an hour and absolute control of that ridiculous find perfectly unnecessary person, the "boss."