THE BOROUGH COUNCIL AND THE UNEMPLOYED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXIX, Issue 7824, 17 June 1909, Page 4

THE BOROUGH COUNCIL AND THE UNEMPLOYED.

To the Editor.- ---! Sir,—Your roports of the Borough Council meetings are generally interesting reading, and that of last Monday's meeting is more than usually so, particularly that part of it which records the notification of the approaching sitting of the Arbitration Court on Bth July. The intimation of the coming sitting occasioned a vulgar and uncalled for interjection from Cr Stewart, who is reported as having said: "I will move that the man who is engineering this be put in gaol." One of the functions of the Arbitration Court is, I ta'kq it, to safeguard the worker's interest against those who, possessing little or no sense of justice, would take advantage of his ignorance or straightened circumstances to pay him a lower wage than that fixed by the law of the land; and I reason that those who object to the workings of that Court would, in their private capacity, screw down their servants to the uttermost, while exacting the utmost service from them. Cr Stewart's ill-advised and undignified remark comes with particularly bad grace from one who ---•->bably owes his public position in great part to the vote of the workingmen of Ashburton, and had his opinion on the Arbitration Court been published previous to the recent election, it is quite possible that he would now be known as ex-councillor.

Cr Stewart's years of public service were generally held as affording proof that he carried the confidence of all sections of the public, but in view of his latest outburst, that, estimate of his popularity stands in need of revision, and that revision may yet result in his relegation to that obscurity he seems fitted to adorn. Allow me to refer to the question of the Council engaging men who may be out of work, which matter was loft in the hands of the Mayor and Cr Stewart, with discretionary power. The minimum wage allowed by law is Is per hour, or 8s per day; and I, am not aware that the Council is exempt from I the provisions of the Act governing the scale of wages. Yet the Mayor advocated that any such men be paid a wage of not more than 6s per day. He may possibly argue that by reason of the work being in the nature of relief, the Council is at liberty to contract outside the provisions of the Act, but I am of opinion that such reasoning is faulty. Relief work was not perhaps contemplated when the ruling scale ot wages was framed, but its omission from the scale affords no justification for the Council attempting to fax ■ a price for such labour: its obvious remedy being to secure the amendment of the Act in a constitutional manner, j There may be some legal provision which empowers corporate bodies to act outwith the general scale of wagess, but if no such provision exists, the Council appears to me to be trenching on dangerous grounds, and legal advice should be obtained ere it attempts to _usurp the functions of the Arbitration Court. The Borough Council seems well vided with tame members who can bo relied on to preserve that golden silence so much affected by" those who have no opinions of their own, and the evidence of more debating power on the part ot such would be welcomed by the general pubiic' SCRUTATOR.