THE WATERFRONT FAILURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 110, 10 May 1923, Page 4

THE WATERFRONT FAILURE.

The early breakdown in the new scheme of control of waterfront labour in Wellington is regrettable. The scheme may have been faulty, but it was a sincere attempt to remedy the very patent defects in the usual methods of handling this large and important class of casual labour. That conditions in wharf work have not been satisfactory has long been known to all who thought about the .question. Waterside workers are employed in a Vkey" industry; they can, it they jike, hold up commerce. Yet the men have to put. up with the disadvantages of broken time and insecurity of a living wage, and there are often more men offering ■ than work can be found for.. This is the'problem of casual labour everywhere, but this special example has been thrust on public; attention by its importance. When the waterside workers' case was recently before the Arbitration Court the union representatives pressed for the adoption of a rotary system of employment, and the Court suggested that an experiment be tried in Wellington. After many weeks, of consideration representatives of Wellington employers -and unioniets drew up a scheme, which was a depar- , ture from the suggested rotary method.

By this nine hundred men were to do the work of the port, and two hundred were nominally excluded. Some of these two hundred, however, filled vacancies in the main body, many were employed as a supplementary force at rush times, and others found employment elsewhere. The idea, in the scheme, which was controlled by a joint committee, was to equalise wages by seeing that work went round"as evenly as possible, and to exclude the many "birds of passage" who have found work on the wharves. JJow, however, the men have voted in favour of discontinuing the scheme, the committee has been dissolved, and the industry has gone back to the old method of scrambling for work. One of the reasons given for this decision is that it was necessary for a man selected to work to give reasons for absence if he failed to appear, "and this ia a little disciplinary measure which is disliked by men who prefer the old-time freedom in their choice of work." This is a very poor Teason. The ideal method of organisation would be a staff of workers on a fixed wage, with guaranteed employment, in which case a man would be required to explain his absence, and while the parties are trying to improve conditfons it is not 'too much to ask that bo much discipline as this should be enforced. We hope this is not the end of a promising experiment in a field where the conditions have been no credit to our industrial system.