AUCKLAND CA BINETMAKEES DISPUTE.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11525, 6 March 1903, Page 5

AUCKLAND CA BINETMAKEES DISPUTE.

ONE HUNDRED MEN IDLE.

(PRESS ASSOCIATION TELEGBAM.)

AUCKLAND, March 5.

The furniture trade lock-out does not include all men employed at the trade, but a hundred are idle. The position is that the employers have retained the men. whom they thiuk worth the Iβ 3d an hour awarded by the Court, and dismissed all others. The award raised the wages from Is Id to Is 3d, which the Union contend ie the rale paid in the couth. Our Auckland correspondent telegraphs thai somewhere between 60 and 80 journeymen cabinetmakers of Auckland are cursing the Arbitration Court and labour legislation audibly just now. Last week they were in tsteady employment at a substantia! wage, and this week they are walking idly about with their hands in their pockets. The reason is simple. The men asked the Arbitration Court to fix higher wages for. them, and higher wages were fixed accordingly, increasing the manufactured coet of furniture from 15 to 22J per cent. Then the employers stepped in. At these wages it no longer paid them to manufacture furniture. It was more profitable, they said, to import. .There is a clause in the award providing that if a man is not worth the wagjes fixed by the Court, the Chairman of the Conciliation Board may permit him to work at a lower rate of wages. The employers drew the attention of the majority of the men to this clause. They didn't consider the men worth,the wages fixed, and referred them to their secretary in order that he might obtain permits to work at a lower rate. Until these permits are forthcoming, the men are suspended, -which is another way of saying that their employment Is gone; They have been struck by the recoil of the labour gun.