WORKMEN'S HARDSHIPS IN AUSTRALIA

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 160, 8 July 1899, Page 1 (Supplement)

WORKMEN'S HARDSHIPS IN AUSTRALIA

MR SYDNEY WEBB'S OPINIONS,

Mr Sydney Webb, author of tho "History of Trades, Unionism," who visited New Zealand last" year, ia course of a lecture at the London School of Economics on "Constitutional Problems in Australasia," after briefly describing the history'of the labour movement in the various colonies, said that in Queensland and New South Wales the position of the working man under the law was certainly far inferior to that in which he stood in the England of to-day; and it reminded the lecturer at many points of England a generation ago. It was significant that it was in these two colonies, in which the workmen had achieved least, that the policy of.an isolated and independent labour party had been most rigorously adhered to. In Victoria, South Australia, and especially New Zealand, the workman ; had. a better legal, status than in the other colonies. The Queensland trade ; unionist in particular was to this day j living under a genuine "white terror," due largely to the ignorance and prejudice of the magistrates and the squatters as to the real nature and effect _ of trade unionism. Throughout Aus'trajlia (New Zealand being here a remarkable exception) the public opinion of the governing and so-called educated class was at least a generation behindhand on this question. Even in Victoria and South Australia workmen's wages were still nibbled at by what we called truck, and were -liable to be attached for debt; whilst outside Melbourne (antj always excepting New Zealand) there was on the whole Continent nothing that could be called effective in the way of factory legislation, even as regards Sanitation or womeii or child labour; could, in most of the colonies at anyrate, still be prosecuted and imprisoned for breach of contract, whilst their employers were liable only to be sued for damages in the civil courts fbfr precisely the same offence, just as in the England of our fathers and as-in the case of our seamen to-day. New Zealand on all these points stood far ahead of Australia. There were,'however, two cases in which colonial labour legislation was In advance of English. One was the New_ Zealand system of compulsory an^itration in labour disputes, which was 'now so well known. The lecturer said that he had made a minute' study of the working of this system, and that he had no doubt whatever that it had been in the special circumstances of New Zealand so far highly successful. Even the employers liked it on the whole, because it enabled them, as one of them expressed it to him,- to "sleep o' nights." They found that the security against strikes and the certainty that their local competitors stood on the same footing as themselves outweighed the very moderate increases of wages that had been forced on them. But the lecturer regarded the success of the.New Zealand arbitration law as consisting not so much in settling actual strike, (of which . in the colonies there were usually very few) as in indirectly fixing by law the minimum conditions of labour, including wages. Hence the "wages boards" of the Victorian Factory ' Act, which achieved the same result In a_ more direct way, were even more significant to the atudentfofvla.bp^r legislation. The minimum wage■• '&&> tailor^sea was, for instance, fixed at £l a week, and that for shirtmakers, at 16/; and those rates.were undoubtedly being paid. The system bad hot been in force long enough to enable a useful judgment to be formed, but it seemed so far wonderfully successful; and, the Act had just been renewed, with practically universal approval. The lecturer was of opinion that a•• similar measure would have to be adopted as regards the English sweated trades; It was, in fact, merely the application to wages of the policy of the .national minimum which had been adopted /m our Factory Acts with regard to sanitation, leisure and education.