TRADE AND LABOUR NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 274, 19 November 1927, Page 20

TRADE AND LABOUR NOTES.

(L;- INDUSTRIAL TRAMP.)

UNION MEETINGS FOR THE WEEK.

Sunday. November 20 —E.P.C. Association. Monday. NovembeV 21—Furniture Trades.

Hairdressers. Tuesday, November 22 —Stonemasons. Thursday, November 24—Coopers.

COURT OF ARBITRATION. From a wire received at the Trades Hall, the Arbitration Court will open its pre-Ciiristmas session in Auckland on December 12. UNION DOINGS. The Hamilton branch of the Auckland Bakers' and Pastrycooks' Union is now an accomplished fact. The branch will cover Hamilton, Frankton and Cambridge. Mr. C. R. Knowles, of Cambridge, is the branch president, and Mr. A. M. St. George, of Hamilton, is secre-tary-treasurer. The ferry employees' dispute, after being adjourned to suit one of the parties, will be heard in Council of Conciliation on Monday, December 5. The union is asking for an increase of four or five shillings a week all round.

Trade matters at the Trades Hall are slightly easier this week, caused, no doubt, by the unemployed relief work that are being carried out in the city and suburbs. The fine weather has also caused some easement of the situation, and it is expected, with the recent increases in wool and butter, that better times are in store.

REMINISCENCES. The passing of Mr. John Fawcus a couple of weeks ago has carried my memory back to some incidents in the ! labour struggle of past rears. One such incident occurred in the old days of the boards of conciliation, which existed prior to the amending Act of 1908, which substituted Councils of Conciliation with a Conciliation Commissioner as chairman. The old boards were composed of two representatives appointed by employers' unions, and two by the workers' unions, with an independent chairman mutually agreed upon by the four members, and, failing such mutual agreement, the Minister of Labour appointed as chairman. In Auckland the board had had for a chairman such men as the late Rev. George Burgess, the Rev. A. H. Collins, now of , New Plymouth, and the late Mr. L. 1 J. Bagnall, at one time Mpyor ot 'Auckland, and when the latter gentleman resigned, the late Mr. Fawcus and the

writer were the two Labour representa^

, tives on the board, and it was thought 1 high time that Labour should have one hof its own members as chairman. A ' meeting of the board was called by the

Clerk of Awards to appoint a chairman.

and one of the employers' representatives being absjnt on his Parliamentary

duties at Wellington, his colleague found himself in a minority on the morning of the meeting. Mr. Fav-cu- was put in the chair pro tern., and name after name of more or less estimable candidates for the position were suggested, only to meet rejection irom one side or the other. Lunch time arrived with a deadlock, and the board adjourned till 2 p.m. On the way down from the Supreme Court builditg I suggested to Mr. Fawcus that he should immediately wire his resignation to the Minister, as a member, and this would leave him eligible for nomination for chairman, which I would do in the afternoon. This was acted upon, and at 2 p.m., on attending the board room, I found the other employers' representative not in attendance, having gone out of town. He was evidently a bit dubious as to where his presence at the meeting would land him. I claimed the books from the clerk of awards, and retired to the board room, conducting the business, alone, as it was not the duty of the clerk to attend the meetings of the board, but got his instructions from . the chairman after the meeting. In a quarter of an hour I delivered to the clerk a record which set forth that at an adjourned meeting of the board Mr. John Fawcus had been unanimously recommended as chairman, and this record was signed by me as chairman pro tem. The clerk was rather staggered by the Gilbertian situation, but sent on the recommendation to the Minister, with an account, of the process. The Minister referred the whole matter to the Crown law officer, who gave his ruling: That the meeting was a properly constituted meeting in the morning and adjourned as such at 1 p.m., but that at 2 p.m. it could not properly be called a meeting, as the solitary member had no one to meet him, therefore the recommendation was null and void. Later on came an intimation that owing to no recommendations having been received for the position, the Governor-in-Council had been pleased to appoint Mr. John Fawcu9, of Auckland, chairman of the Board of Conciliation for the Northern Industrial District; and chairman he remained until the board system went out of existence. The local press humorists of the day fairly revelled in the possibilities at that -meeting, and by cartoons showed the chairman, mover and seconder of the resolution in successive pictures. The public was amused, but we got our Labour chairman.

44-HOUR WEEK. By a unanimous judgment the Full Court of the Federal Arbitration Court on October 19 last reduced the working period of gas employees in Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania, from 48 to 44 hours a week, as a result Of an application by the Federated Gag Employees' Union.

Chief Judge Dethridge, in his judgment, Paid that considering the nature of their work, the condition* tinder which it had to be performed, and the fact that in New South Wale# and Queensland a 44-hour week now operated In gas plants, and would probably soon prevail in Western Australia, ht came to the conclusion that the Standard working hours for shift men (other than night watchmen) in Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania should not exceed an average of 44 houra a week. The shifts are to be worked so as to make an aggregate of time on duty not exceeding 179 hours ©f shift time in each period of four weeks.

Regarding day workers, such as boilercleaners, bricklayers, builders' labourers, blacksmiths, and numerous others, Chief Judge Dethridge ea* no reason fat excluding them from the benefit of the shorter week. Regarding carters, locomotive drivers, and stablemen, he made no declaration at present, as their appropriate hours would have to be considered in other applications pending before the Ceiift.

A provision against strikes was also included in the order of the Court.

SOCIETY AND THE UNION MAN,

Society is not against the union man, with his so-called high wages, for it knows man is worthy of his hire.

As the tree is bent, so it grows. The worker rises to a level which is a little above slavery, and an exceedingly small percentage of the workers ever rise above this level. Society knows while the - union man is in the majority with respect to the vast army of workers, yet the penitentiary statistics will show a great minority of union workers in the number of prisoners received. It is well known that organised Labour lessens the extent of crime, and in the case of the small percentage of wrongdoings that is actually charged up to the union worker it is found the perpetrators of these offences are invariably caught through the system of check on their members which is kept by the unions. The time is fast approaching when the public will demand the union man to do their work, for the employer knows that in giving the worker Bhort hours and good wages the worker has more time to devote to the pursuit of his favourite phantom, which in turn has a great tendency to soothe the mind of the worker to a feeling of contentment, and everybody knows that as contented cows give the best milk, so it is with the worker. A fair wage generally creates a contented mind, which has a great ability to produce a better quality of work and more of it. It behoves the worker to maintain an unselfish mind towards his employer and to render a full equivalent in labour for the wages he is paid, as the knowledge is gradually coming to him that he is working with his employer, and not for him, hence a general trend in the direction of co-operation. The sick and death benefits derived by the union man are too well known, but nevertheless must be given mention here, as they protect him from becoming a public charge. In this Christian era in which we live man's inhumanity to man is gradually becoming obsolete, for the people are rapidly learning that as a man thinketh so is he, and in order to obtain the sweets of life we all must uproot and subdue the selfish thought and cultivate clean thinking in its stead*—R. E. Maack, in "Painter and Decorator."