WHITCOMBE AND TOMBS AS SWEATERS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2085, 14 August 1890, Page 4

WHITCOMBE AND TOMBS AS SWEATERS.

The Evening Post has published an article on the Whitcombe and Tombs dispute. It says that it began last February, that all the bouses agreed to certain rules except one firm, or rather one of the firm, for Mr Tombs accepted the proposals as fair. After detailing the whole dispute the Post goes to giye the result ot the evidence taken before the Sweating Commission regarding the firm. “ One boy, who had been making 6s to 7s per week on piece-work, stated he was taken off it and put on wages at 5s per week, and expected to work overtime at night at Id per hour, being fined 6d for every mistake. Two boys, for knocking down some implement in the workroom, making a noise but doing no damage, were fined 10s each, the amount representing a week’s wages to the one, and week and a half t® the other. There were no rules or scale of fines displayed in the workroom. The firm had a contract for embossing 20,000 envelopes. The work took longer than was anticipated, and they lost on the contract. This loss, £1 12s 2d, they charged to the girl who had had the work to do. Her wages were £1 per week. The girl said she had been delayed by the machinery being in bad order and breaking downtwice. Mr Whitcombe, in his evidence, said the machine was in good order, and implied that the girl had not done her best, as she subsequently embossed a larger number in a shorter time. No such system of fining seemed to be known in other establishments. Mr Whitcombe insisted that fines were necessary to preserve discipline, and stated that for several years the total of fines inflicted had only amounted to £l7 5s 3d. If a boy were absent for illness, even for an hour, his wages were docked- Boys and men were fined the same amounts, irrespective of what they were earning. A boy was fined £1 13s for bad work in ruling, but a journeyman gave evidence that the fault was in the bad ink supplied. A boy who met with a serious accident, through no fault of his own, was refused re-employment when he came out of the Hospital. In a case of another accident, the sufferer

was charged foe the time of another employe who went for relief, and thp time of one who accompanied the sufferer to his home or to the Hospital, was also deducted. One witness stated the boys were required to work eleven hours and forty minutes a day for a period four months, and many of them became ill.”