GLOOMY OUTLOOK FOR CARPENTERS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9159, 5 August 1908, Page 5

GLOOMY OUTLOOK FOR CARPENTERS.

MEN OUT OF WORK

The carpenters and jokers of Wellington are passing through a period of slackness at the present time. There is something like a crisis in •■■he trade, according to the secretary of the union (Mr G. H. Lightfoot). "Tilings are becoming worse and worse," he said to a Post reporter yesterday. "1 estimate that there arc over 100 carpenters and joiners out of work in Wellington to-day, and the outlook is distinctly gloomy. We hold a meeting of unemployed tradesmen at the Trades Hall en Wednesday to see what can be done to relieve the situation. There are between 30 and 40 members of the union alone out of employment, and some of them have been out for weeks. One man I know of, an excellent tradesman, a married man, has been walking about Wellington for over eight weeks, and cannot find a hand's turn to do at his trade." It was put to Mr Lightfoot that supposing the wages scale were temporarily reduced would that induce more employment? He did not think any reduction in I he rate of pay (Is 4d an hour) would .relieve the situation at all. "The weekly wages," he said, "twenty years ago were about the same as to-day—£3 a week, although the hours were more; but the cost of living has increased so much that it is impossible for the men to work for less than they are doing. This is common knowledge. Tne meeting ia for all tradesmen, unionists or otherwise, who are out oi: work, and we are hoping, once the Government j is convinced of the grave character lof the situation, that works which have been authorised will be proceeded with. We are in. a worse plight than men would be in England, because there a man can go from town to town with apparent ease. Here our chief centres are so very wide apart that travelling is very costly; moreover, things are as bad in the other centres as in Wellington, so that we are bound to stay here or we might lose the only chance we have. The situation ia serious, and members of the trade are feeling the I stringency most acutely."