CO-OPERATIVE CONTRACTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 138, 13 June 1922, Page 8

CO-OPERATIVE CONTRACTS.

(To the Editor.* Sir, —Knowing that your paper is published in the interests of the workers I shall be glad if you will make the facts known of the way the system styled the "Co-operative Contract Agreement" is worked at present in New Zealand. In the first place all work done on excavating earth is measured uy a Government engineer, whose decision is final, and accordingly the worker has no means of | getting any difference of opinion in; I regard to measurement of work being I redressed. In the second place, when a j party of men arc engaged on a contract 1 under the existing Co-operative Contract I Agreement, the overseer is at liberty to I take any of the men away from their I contract work and put them on any I other work, thus breaking up and spoil- : ing the contract gang. For the third I place, if engaged on work requiring horses ' and drays, the gang engaged on the conI tract are compelled to take any number of horses and drays which the overseer ! thinks fit, and the men arc compelled to I work and pay for these horses and drays jat the price fixed by the engineer for j their hire, whether they want then> or j not, and also they have to work and i pay for the drivers' wages. The last I condition amounts to slavery for the ' worker to the agricultural interests as I they (the agricultural interests) always supply the horses and drays and drivers. Cii\inj; these facts publicity in your paper for the enlightenment of the public may help to got a vicious system abolished so that the workers can get a square deal..— I am, etc., E. J. PEDEN.