FORTY-HOUR WEEK

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 206, 1 September 1941, Page 6

FORTY-HOUR WEEK

Many organisations and individuals are proclaiming that the smashing of the 40-hour week would lead us to victory. Their wild assertions will meet with little approval of the workers of New Zealand when logic and facts are the need of the hour. The arguments and prejudices used against the first Factories Act have all been resurrected whenever there has been industrial reform placed on the Statute book. Age-old prejudice dies hard, as modern experience lias demonstrated. Many of our members have rallied to the call of arms in defence of their country, their standard of living and working conditions. and many of our comrades have made the supreme sacrifice knowing full well me consequences if Hitler won. Sureiy if these things are worth fighting for and dying for they are worth preserving and maintaining. The presence of such outcry against the 40-hour week is hardly complimentary to our war aims and belies the existence in NewZealand of a free and enlightened democracy. C\ C. SOMEUYELU Branch Secretary, a SC. and J-, Gisborne.