[.—9a.

10

T.T. BEVERIDGE.

John Beverioge, Proprietor Grand Hotel, Wellington, made a statement and was examined. (No. 4.) Witness : I should like to say that hotel servants are not the overworked, underpaid, and generally harassed people that one is led to suppose. In hotels we find that the staff is generally fairly well content, and those hours and the conditions that are being asked for them now are not being put forward by the large body of hotel employees. We find that we have no difficulty in getting housemaids to come from private employ and take service in hotels, where they find the conditions are very much easier than they are in domestic service. You will be told that one of the reasons for advocating this six-day week in the Dominion is that it is a success in Australia. 1 have just returned front Australia, and I can assure you that the six-day week there is not the success that it is said to be. The conditions there are totally different from the conditions obtaining in hotels in this Dominion. There the staffs work under altogether different conditions and are not so content as they are here. For instance, waiters in Australia get £1 10s. a week in the larger hotels, and out of that they find their own room —they live out. They dine in a mess-room and have to take whatever food is given to them, and in many cases they do not take that. Then they have to stand in the dining-rooms and stand by the tables, and are not allowed to have any time off during that working-hour—conditions totally different from those obtaining here. Again, we shall be told that the wholesale trade are in favour of this six-day week. The wholesale trade, although allied to us in a certain manner, has nothing to do with the retail conditions : so it is quite easy for members of it to say they are in sympathy with this proposal, when it is not costing them anything. That brings me down to the question of what it will cost if this six-day week is to obtain. I should like to emphasize that if this six-day week becomes law it is going to create one of the greatest hardships that hotelkeepers have ever had to contend with in this Dominion. As against the wages that are paid on " the other side," waiters here are paid £1 12s. 6d. per week, and have board and lodging found for them, as against the £1 10s. paid to the waiters on " the other side," who have to find their board—ss. a week for a room. In the Grand Hotel, which lam running now, I have a staff of three usefuls, seven in the kitchen, four in the pantry, eleven in the dining-room, four in the hall, two night porters, six maids, one storeman, and three clerks, making up a total of forty-one, not including the bar staff. If the six-day Bill comes into force, it means that on every day of the seven days six of my staff will not turn-to. If it takes forty-one to carry out the work of the hotel under normal circumstances, and we have to comply with the conditions of this six-day Bill, it means that we shall have to ask the remaining thirty-five hands to do the work of the forty-one, and it naturally follows that, if we ask that, the guests who are paying the tariff cannot possibly be as well looked after as they are now. The alternative would be to augment that staff x by at least one housemaid at 175., one cook at, say, £1 15s. to £2, one hall-porter £1 55., two waiters £3 55., and one useful £1 55., making an extra minimum staff of six, at an actual weekly wage of £8 12s. Then board and lodging have to be added —£4 10s.—and I should like to point out incidentally that, whereas the extra staff would be over and above our actual requirements as they exist now, in my case I have no more accommodation for the staff, and they would all have to live out, so that would he an extra £1 10s. for room accommodation for the six. That would make up, with board and lodging included, £13 2s. per week, or £681 4s. a year, without including accident insurance or expenses for the six. I say that that is an extortionate charge to put on any hotelkeeper at the present juncture. It is a well-known fact that there are hardly any hotels in the Dominion that, with the present price of food, are even squaring themselves in the dining-room. Evidence was brought here some eighteen months ago, I think, to show that some hotels in the City of Wellington were actually making a dead loss of between £400 and £500 a year on the dining-room alone. To ask us to put on a further charge for extra staff is to place a hardship on the hotelkeepers. The hotels within the last six years seem to me to have been simply a chopping-block in the way of legislation. We have been giving and giving, and getting no protection whatever. Mr. Pry or has pointed out to you the reduction that has been made in the hours from 1906 and also the increase in wages that has taken place, and I can tell you that although the union only allows 15s. for boarding and lodging in the case of a man living out, I have gone into the cost of the staff, and I find that the actual cost of feeding members of the staff is iOd. per head per meal, giving 2s. 6d. per day, or 17s. 6d. per week. Then there is ss. for a room, which makes £1 2s. 6d. We have to bear all that extra cost ourselves, because it is a well-known fact that nearly 75 per cent, of the staff are boarded on the establishment. In first-class hotels the cost of victualling guests runs from Is. Bd. to Is. lOd. her head per meal, thus leaving a very small margin, if any, where meals are given, and in many instances showing a large loss. I should like to emphasize what Mr. Pryor said, that we go before the Arbitration Court and have an award given, and immediately that award is given and the union find they have got everything they asked for, they approach the Legislature and have other conditions granted them, and we have no chance whatever of stoppingit. Another phase of the question : You may say that one way of combating the extra expense would be to raise the tariff to the guests. But immediately we start raising the tariffs above what they are now it will have the effect of driving a proportion of the people who patronize the hotels to the large first-class boardinghouses, and would create a demand for first-class boardinghouses, which I should like to point out are in direct competition with first-class and second-class hotels, but are not bound by the legislation or by any award conditions, and thereby unfair competition is created. If legislation were passed bringing domestic servants, and boardinghouse-keepers, and private hotels under the same conditions as the licensed hotels, then possibly it would, be a safeguard to some extent; but as things are now we have them in unfair competition. 1. Mr. Hindmarsh.] Every reform is opposed, is it not, and all sorts of doleful prophecies are indulged in ? — Yes, but we have facts and figures to prove what we are contending — that this would cause us great hardship. Of course, it is only natural that we will oppose the proposal—and so would you if you were in business and some one came along and desired to curtail your profits. 2. You oppose it because it hits your pocket ?—Exactly.