CAPITAL AND LABOR IN SPAIN.

New Zealand Tablet, 8 April 1915, Page 45

CAPITAL AND LABOR IN SPAIN.

Few people in this country, we suppose; have ever imagined, that we have anything to learn-from. Spain in regard to the question of capital and labor (says the Sacred Heart Review). Mr. Joaquin Orus, a, manufacturer of chocolate at Saragossa, in'Spain, has drawn up rules for his employees as follow: The ordinary duration of work per day will be according to the months of the year in January, February, September, October, November, and December it will be nine hours for men and seven for women. : . In March, April, May, June, July, and August, it will be ten hours for men and eight for women. Every five hours of overtime will be taken as a day, and paid for as a day. In weeks which have only five working days, the employees will work one hour more a day, to draw a full week's wages. Overtime is not compulsory; and no employee need work it unless he wants the money. Those who have been two years in the employ will have the following advantages.: A sick workman will get his full wages for the three months; 'halfwages for the next three months; and quarter wages for six months after that. He will have medical and druggists' assistance free from the doctors and druggists employed by the firm. In case the sick employee is to receive the last Sacraments, all the employees of two years' standing will attend thereat with lighted candles. If he or she dies the employer will pay for a hearse of the second class, burial in consecrated ground, and the saying of a Mass for the deceased. The employees of two years' standing will attend the funeral and the Mass. Every employee who shall complete 30 years of uninterrupted service in the employ will have the right to cease work on a pension equal to half his wages, payable weekly till his death. On July 16, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, patroness of the factory, Mass will be said, and there will be a general Communion. If it be a working day the employees will be paid without work for the day. And this remarkable and most Christian code of rules concludes: 'This important date will be celebrated by a- fete for the purpose of drawing closer the bonds which join together the employees with their employer.' L'Action Socicde, to which we are indebted for this information, says very truly that these rules 'deserve to be read by all those who wish to know the influence of the social doctrines of Catholicism and to learn to apply them.' Nowhere are the relations between rich and poor more friendly than in Spain.