TRADE & LABOUR NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 163, 10 July 1907, Page 8

TRADE & LABOUR NOTES.

(By Industrial Tramp.7

reuues'priT 8 , 0 * the Tarlous TJnions *» en-,™,™ ° forwar <i copies of their Union »s£?" A« S to "Industrial Tramp," mXI win ? ce -- and a list of Union Me «- colnmo L? c t ° rnishe < 1 ut the head of this column for each week.) UNION MEETINGS FOR THE WEEK This Evening, July 10 _ Trades and Labour Council (Lecture). (Audit) JUly U ~ *«-"«>» Trades 18 - Furuiture ~™*"; Manu'ro J w y P~, West^l d Chemical Jianure Workers (Quarterly). TUe h d tte y rs; P ' UmberS ™* «» .Wednesday, July 17 - Waterside Workers. At the last meeting of the Auckland -trades and Labour Council, the advisableness of securing a Trades Hall for the Auckland unions to hold their, meetings in, was touched on by a delegate and a resolution was passed asking the members of the Trades' Hall trust to consider the desirability of instituting mqiunes for a suitable piece of ground on which to build a Trades Hall. Dunedin, Christehurch, and Wellington posTrades Halls of their own, and the Auckland unionists consider that it is high time that they had premises of their own to-meet in. The local unions hold their meetings in the many and various halls in the city, and are paying rent to other people; and there is no reason why they should not possess a hall of their own, if the unions take the matter up in an energetic spirit. The Trades Hall Trust has now a sum of nearly £500, as the result of Labour Day celebrations, and seeing that land for building sites in the city has been going up in price by leaps and bounds, it is highly necessary that an early move should be made by the trustees, before all available sections are taken up. The Christehurch Trades Hall, iv Glou- ■ cester-street, is an example of what can be done by labour unions when they make up their minds to accomplish a desired object. The different unions in that city : took up debentures and advanced the money, to build a fine modern brick build- . ing, which all the unions in the city and suburbs can meet in. The example of the Southerners should be followed by the Auckland unionists as speedily as possible, and the hall secured. Such a building would pay from, the jump, -as the various unions—between thirty and forty— 3 would, by paying rent to themselves, amply cover all risks, and in time pay off all borrowed money. The proposal is well worth considering favourably.

The members of the Tramways Union have been considering the extra work entailed in carrying more than the registered number of passengers on the cars, Under the rules and regulations of the company, as approved by the City Council, each car is licensed to carry a stated number of passengers, for whom sitting accommodation is provided. Some cars are licensed to carry 36 passengers, others 56, while the deckers 'carry more stilL These numbers have " not been strictly regarded in the past, and it has row leached a pass when the cars are crowded to suffocation; this entails extra work upon the- men, and they hive determined to only curry the regular number "ou each car. I.ast week some ol the aea Instituted the r.ew system, and they found that they had infinitely less wort: to collect their tickets and fares. it must be noted that each conductor at the close of his dsy's work has to pay jut Of his own pocket any shortage in casn M tickets caused by giving wrong change, or two tickets for jne in \he rush of the traffic. They find that when the cars arc overcrowded is the time when the most shortages occur, hence their determination to- minimise the shortages as much as possible ty carrying the licensed number cf oasstmgers. In addition to this reason, a. conductor is liable to have To pay his own fine, and, if fined twice for any breach of the by-laws —of which overcrowing is one—he runs the risk of having his license car.celled by the City Council." Tha remedy to the whole matter, of course, is more ears to be put on by thd company; the public would then be carried to their destinations comfortably and £X_*A*t-:oi>ely, and the conductors would ba able to carry oni their work much eas.tr + b—u they have been doing iv the past. Th_r already small joy of l(4d ].er bcur would nor, oe stiil further lessened by hf.vjng to pay sh,i:t ages caused by over-press of work. Circulars are to be issued to all trade unions, trade councils, and local labour parties by the joint board representing the Trades Union Congress, the Federation of Trade Unions, and "the Labour party in Britain, requesting theTn to support the joint board in its endeavour to prevent the useless multiplicity of trade unions by refusing to affiliate or countenance in any way any new trade union or its officials unless its formation has been endorsed by the joint board. We talk in a superior way about the wretched housing conditions of the poor in England, yet in fashionable Woollahra (Sydney) ah old couple were poisoned by" the" fumes of charcoal, with which they were trying to warm a room that, according to report, was a "sort of cellar!" A sort of cellar! Presumably any sort of cellar is good enough for old people to live in when they are pool. — ("Worker.") - The rtatmch labour agitator, nick-nam-ed throughout America "The Sands Lots Orator," otherwise Dennis Kearney, has answered last month to the "call of the mustetr roll. It was in 1878 that Kearney fought with sveh wonderful energy far the further e_ pulsion from the Jan! of his adoption oi the Chinese, nus labours resulting in the passing of "The Chinese Exclusion Law." Another American orator in the labour ranks, the warrior John Mitchell, lies at the point of death in Chicago. He took the leadership of the* anthracite coal miner strike in 1902, sind brought it to a successful finish. In an article in "Labour Leader," Mr Ban-ay Macdonald assails, in his owu chars—t'.-risi ie way, the notion that it 13 the business of the Labour party in Parliament to engage in fireworks and stage thunder performances in the House. He is all for having the Labour party make the pace by a stout grasp of its own socialistic and labour proposals, and by the competency of its criticisms of the policy of the Government, thus forcing its own purpose ahead by masterly energy and skill, rather than by oratorical demonstrations and turbulent threatening:, of any kind. In "Monday's issue appears a cable from London, stating that the Jarrow seat had been won in a by-election by Mr Curran, a labour man, by a majority of 760 votes over the Conservative candidate. Jarrow is essentially a working constituency. The late member, Sir Charles Palmer, was born in 1822, at South Shields, and early in life when iron afloat was still an object of suspicion, he started a small sMpbuilding yard at Jarrow,, which "nobody would recognise

now for the same. It has absorbed into cne giant concern coal and iron mines, blast furnaces, engine sheds, rolling, mills and an army of 15.000 workers —all under the plain title of the Jarrow works. He has sat continuously for Jarrow in the House of Commons since 1885. Mr Pete Curran, the new member, was defeated by Sir Charles for the seat last year, by a majority of 2954 votes. His advent to the House of Commons will still further strengthen the Labour nartv there. - r J

The election of Mr Pete Curran, for Jarrow, last week was rendered interesting by the fact that the Irish Nationalists put up a candidate for the late Sir Charles Palmer's seat in opposition to the Labour party. As we were informed a few- weeks ago by the cable, the Irish party were incensed by the action of the British Labour party in supporting a resolution to bring all religious houses under Government inspection. The result was that a Nationalist candidate, Mr O'Hanlon, was nominated, coming last, with 2124 votes, as against Mr Curran's 4698. What a pity that even in the Old Country the religious element -should be imported into a political struggle.