UNEMPLOYMENT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10275, 30 June 1911, Page 4

UNEMPLOYMENT.

The carpenters and joiners" of Wellington want Is 8d per hour for a forty hours week. In support of this demand, they state that there is an over-abundance of labour, and that consequently work is intermittent. As Judge Sim pointed out, the demand is tantamount to an insurance against unemployment. A more audacious proposal could not have been. made. If the workers could only see it, they would discover in it a wicked and selfish attempt to victimise the unemployed. It must be remembered that the higher the wages paid to those in employment, the higher becomes the cost of living to those who are out of work, and the less money available for expenditure in labour generally. There might be some reason in iJiie proposal if workers undertook to share .their earnings with those out of employment, or to take week about at work. But the trades unionist is not constructed on those lines. He is .after himself all the time, and he does not stop to consider how much misery; and wretchedness is treated by his ill-advised conduct. Fortunately Judge Sim and the Arbitration Court ton see the drift of the whole business.