LABOUR NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 12

LABOUR NOTES.

UNION ACTIVITIES. (By INDUSTRIAL TRAMP.) UN lOX MEETINGS FOR. THE WEEK. Wednesday, July 24—Plasterers. Thursday, July —Coopers. THE BY-ELECTION. With polling day fixed for next Wednesday, the by-election for a successor to the late Mrs. E. R. McCombs, M.P. for the Lyttelton seat, bulks very large in the public mind, and the campaigns on behalf of the respective candidates are growing in intensity as the day gets nearer. Even the opponents of Labour now admit that Mr. Lyons, the Coalition candidate, has all his work cut out to capture the seat from Labour. To the superstitious person Lyttelton electorate might be expected to be rather illomened from the fact that the last three, if not four, occupiers of that seat died in harness. There was the late Hon. Geo. Laurenson, who had earned the name of one of the most liberalminded Ministers of the Crown the Dominion lias ever had, who died as member for Lyttelton. After him, Mr. James McCombs, M.P., and Mrs. E. R. McCombs, M.P., husband and wife, each died in harness, and I think I am right when I state that a former member, Mr. Joyce, also died while he was M.P. for the same electorate. But wise and enlightened people pay no attention to such omens as these, and the vacancy is being contested eagerly by no less than four candidates, one of them a McCombs. Next Wednesday will show] whether Labour has lost its hold 011 the ! electorate.

WORK FOR UNEMPLOYED. This is the problem that is facing most of the deeply populated cities and towns of the Dominion, for each of them has unemployed to a greater or lesser extent within its own gates. The general opinion is that the finding of woik is a national question, but the Government up to the present has only been touching the fringe of the question. Auckland, as a city, is deeply affected; thousands of its ratepayers, not to say residents, have been in sore straits for some time past. To the ratepayer who owns his own little property and has to pay off his mortgage as well as pay rates and live in the meantime, the situation is a hard one. In some cases the owners throw up the light and leave the mortgagor with the property 011 his hands, and he, or she, is very often an elderly person who has been depending 011 the small return of interest for an existence in old age.

When the new City Council took office in May it was decided to set up a new I committee, to be called the Employment ; Committee, whose work should be the j consideration of useful reproductive work for the unemployed. Thev, in turn, authorised the city engineer to submit a comprehensive list of works in the city that could be profitably considered by the council, and from which the most pressing items could be adopted. This list was brought down at the council meeting on Thursday, and appeared as a veritable bombshell to several of the councillors who had been members of previous councils. They concluded that the Labour majority was entering on an orgy of spending, involving financial disaster to the city, and pleaded short notice of circulation of the list, and consequent ignorance of its contents, which included necessary drainage, formation of roads in districts where little or none have existed; adequate housing for the administrative staff at the Town Hall, who have been working under cramped and unhygienic conditions for years past, and provision for workers' homes in the city. The estimates from the engineer totted up to the modest sum of three-1 quarters of a million pounds, and was quite sufficient to cause the heart to miss a beat or two until the explanation came from the chairman of the committee.

THE EXPLANATION. It may be of interest to note how that big list was compiled, as it will help to dispel the idea that it is the sudden and recent creation of a Labour Council that is only concerned about the welfare of the unemployed. Years ago, when the spectre of economic stress began to make its presence known, the city had been enlarged by the addition of the Point Chevalier, Avondale and Tamaki Road Board districts, who brought with them liabilities without corresponding assets.. With only two lor three Labour men on the City j Council, the control of civic affairs was lin the hands of the other side. An increased population demanded increased service, and this had to be done without increasing the rates, which were 4/ and later 3/11 in the £. When applications for new and better roads and streets came before the council, it was found impossible to do extensive works out of revenue, and the invariable reply to such applications was sympathetic but to defer the matter until "next [year's estimates were being considered," hoping that by that time, times would be on the mend. Interest on loans at that time was fairly high, and an increase of rates was unthinkable. It would mean disaster to the party who proposed it, and so "the more convenient season" did not arrive. Now, with a Labour majority on the council, the new employment committee has been set up to go in to ways and means and submit a recommendation to the council. The city engineer from instructions to prepare a list of necessary works with estimates, naturally turns to his files and pigeon holes and produces all these poor "unwantcds" to make up the formidable list submitted to Thursday's meeting.

The senior councillors could not reasonably plead ignorance of the items. It was more a case- of civic amnesia or loss of memory. The report was adopted by the council and referred to the respective committees. It must not be assumed that all these projects will be done at once. They will be spread over a number of years, for we are not "out of the wood" yet by any means. It will also be ascertained what is most pressing, where the most labour can be absorbed for all trades, and to what extent will the Unemployment Board assist or subsidise necessary new works.

LOANS DEDUCTED FROM WAGES. The "Daily Herald," in a recent issue, reports that a test case of great importance to the trade union movement is to be brought by an operative against a Darwen (Lancashire) firm. It reports j that there is a growing practice in industry of workers making loans to the capital of firms fop which they work. In certain cases, where workers have j I been unable to find a lump- sum, these i i loans have been made by weekly deductions from their pay. A question as to] the validity of this under tlicTruck Act is involved in the action, which will j probably be heard shortly in a county 1 Court.