JAPANESE WAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 115, 18 May 1933, Page 4

JAPANESE WAGES.

THREE SHILLINGS A DAY. SECRET OF LOW-PRICED GOODS. An extraordinary revelation of modern industrial conditions _in Japan is given in an official report just issued from the International Labour Office at Geneva. The statistics quoted show how impossible it is for British manufacturers to compete on price levels with the output of Japanese factories organised on a basis of low wages and long hours. Wages in Japan, according to British standards, are fantastically small. Three shillings a day is the average wage of all industrial workers,-of whom there are nearly 5,000,000 in Japan. In some industries, particularly those which compete with British factories, the rate of pay is even less. Here is a -wage };able of textile industries: —■ Rate per day average, s. d. Silk filatures 1 0 Cotton spinning 1 10 Cotton weaving 1 8 Wool weaving 2 7 Large numbers of juvenile workers, particularly girle, are employed in various industries, and the average wage of these children is 7%d a day. Women factory workers receive about 1/1 a day. Scoree of factories in Japan work on a system of payment for labour -partly in money and partly in kind. No fewer than 776.000 workers are paid in this'way, and receive in money an average of 1/5 a day. The average duration of work in the textile trades is ten hours eighteen minutes a day. In other industries the average is nearly ten hours a day. The only restriction of hours is for women and children under 16. They must not work more than eleven hours a day.