TRADE AND LABOUR NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 161, 9 July 1926, Page 11

TRADE AND LABOUR NOTES.

(By INDUSTRIAL TRAMP.*

L'XIOX MEETINGS FOR THE WEEK. This Evening, July 9.—Curriers. Monday, July 12.—Painters, Gum Workers. Wednesday, July 14.—Auckland Carpenters, Onehunga Carpenters, Gas Employees. Thursday. July 15. —Trades and Labour Coimiil.

THE CAUSE OF IMMIGRATION. Notwithstanding the acute position of the unemployed in our midst, the month of July will witnees no diminution of arrivals in the Dominion, landed here with assistance from the Government, under the spurious safeguard of a "nominated system*" which has been shown to be farcical in the extreme. "Farcical,"' because of the fact that l>eople have been nominated to come out to the Dominion by people of the Dominion, who had never heard of their nominees, much less known them. Three or four liners are due to arrive here this month, each with a large number of immigrants on beard to swell the already large number on the unemployed roll. When the Government is asked the reason for increasing the population by such an unnatural method, a reason is given that we have an obligation to help the Mother Country in the solution ot the problems of unemployment, and surplus population. Bpt Mr. Leopokl Amery, in a speech to the Empire Press Union Conference, jrives another reason which ig totally different to that given on this side of the world. In a cable (June 29). Mr. Amery gives as his reason: "Empire migration was not designed to relieve British unemployment, which was solely Britain's responsibility, but migration was a matter of economic and political stability, of social well-being, and of Empire defence, because the Dominions no longer dwelt in regions remote from conflict. As the world narrowed, the dominions had come into the arena, and it was no longer practical to depend alone on Britain's defensive resources/

Which is the real reason? During the Great War and since much has been said and written of the stamina and initiative of the native born Xew Z«alanders, who volunteered and were sent to the war to the number of over 100.000, to help the Mother Country in her hour or neod. One has almost the opinion, that our boys sent home, were super-men, judged by their deeds at Gallipoli, Egypt, and France; it comes as a bit of a shock to our self-esteem to be told that this influx of blood and bone from the Old Country is to strengthen us in the '"next war , ' which, it is opined, Is eound to be in the Pacific. It cannot be to strengthen our patriotism, for the averajre Xew Zealander, is not one whit behind the average Britisher in his solicitude for the well-being of the Empire. If the migrants arriving here from Britain were of the farming class, one could understand the wisdom of settling the waste acres of the Dominion, but it only requires a short passage of six weeks' duration for migrants who left England as ruralists, to be transformed into the most confirmed urbanists. At any rate, it is in the cities where they are eventually to be found.

DELAYS ARE DANGEROUS. By failing to make a claim for compensation within six months of an injury to an eye bhat destroyed the sight, David Pollock, of Christchurch, lost an action for compensation against the Kaiapoi Woollen Company, heard by the Arbitration Court, when sitting at Christ-church a couple of weeks ago. The injury occurred in 1922. In giving judgment for the company, the Court said that an extreme time was allowed in the case of a man who had no real reason at the expiration of that period to believe that his injury would get worse. Pollock's eye went blind in May, 1922, however, and he did not make any claim within a reasonable period; in fact, he did not take up the matter as a compensation claim tfntil his employment was terminated.

FLOUR MILL EMPLOYEES. A new log of wages and conditions was served last week on the flour millers in Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia by the Federated Millers and «*lill Employees' Association of Australia. The claim seeks rates ranging from £o 15/ per week of forty-four hours for all employees whose duties are not specified to £6 11/6 for shift millers or roller men, and £8 2/G for foremen millers. The rates for youths and improvers range from £3 1/6 for the first year to £4 4/6 for the fifth year, and the rate claimed for youths employed in trucking and wheat shooting is £.3 15/ per week. A forty-hour week, in five eight-hour shifts, is claimed for afternoon and night shifts. Travelling time, overtime, holidays, and preference are also requested.

SLAVERY IN BRITAIN. Slavery is supposed to have been abolished long ago, yet the following facts from the report of H.M. Chief Inspector of Factories shows that it still lives. In a mantle and dressmaking establishment women were kept at work from 9 a.m. until midnight on six successive clays, and then were given work to take home to do on Sunday. After a fortnight of this incessant intensive toil they had accumulated stocks larger than were needed, and so they were dismissed. At another establishment women and young girls of fourteen years of age were employed from 6 o'clock in the morning until half-past 11 at night, and they, too, had to work on Sunday as well. A number of women in a pork pie factory were made to work from S o'clock in the morning until after midnight, and then to start again at 8 o'clock in the morning. Again, it was found that in a bleach works four women and a girl were kept at work continuously for thirtysix hours without a stop.