HOURS OF WORK.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 39, 25 November 1939, Page 4

HOURS OF WORK.

PROPOSAL FOR AN INCREASE. PROTEST BY RAILWAYMEN (Per Press Association). CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. Proposals to increase, the hours, of work in New Zealand as a war emergency have, drawn strong protest from the Addington branch of the Amalgamated Soceity of Railway Servants. A resolution passed at a: recent meeting states “this branch desires to protest most emphatically against the recent resolutions passed by the Progress League and Chamber of Commerce in regard to the lengthening of the hours of work and the Government's financial policy, particularly as it affects control of banking in this country. Members are definitely of the opinion that, any more in the direction of lengthening of hours is as retrogressive, as it is unnecessary and is not advocated from a patriotic motive hut purely as a return to capitalistic orthodoxy, and they call upon all workers to support the Government in their endeavour to retain such reform to the last ditch, realising that it is much easier to go backwards than to makc advances. Consequently the gains already made should be held and elujrished at all costs, notwithstanding the absolute failure, of the orthodox money and hanking systems in years gone by, arid even to-day, to bring .about emancipation of the mass of the people we view with the deepest possible feelings of regret the suggestion that the country should return to its former system of finance with consequent poverty, misery, degradation, starvation, bankruptcy and depression, under the cloak of patriotism, and we urge all workers in general, and industrial workers in particular, to pay no heed to the bickerings! of those who would use a patriotic cloak for the purpose of lowering our living conditions for personal aggrandisement and who are prepared to take us back to the form of orthodoxy, and ruin such as the people of this country experienced a few short years ago. We pledge ourselvets to support the policy of the Government in this connection against all-coiners and urge upon all workers everywhere to get behind the Government with all the strength they can muster and defeat for ever the* force of capitalism and reaction in this wonderfully endowed and very happy little country.”