FREEZING WORKERS' DISPUTE

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21992, 16 January 1937, Page 17

FREEZING WORKERS' DISPUTE

TO THE EDITOtt OF THE TRESS. Sir, —Your correspondent, "Oil and Water," presumes to know more about the Canterbury Freezing Workers' Union than I do as secretary. So much does he know that I can say quite definitely that >there is no such thing as a national council in existence amongst the freezing works organisations. In this case he is 100 per cent, in error. There are more than 400 members in the Related Trades Section of the union, where "Oil and Water" says there are only about 100. In this case he is 75 per cent, in error. I have met several so-called "old hands" of the calibre of "Oil and Water," and I have much pleasure in challenging him to come out in the open and debate any matter he cares to raise affecting freezing workers' organisations. Am I right in assuming that "Oil and Water" agrees with the reduction in the standard of living of the freezing workers imposed .by the Court of Arbitration? —Yours, etc., H. G. KILPATRICK. Secretary, Canterbury Freezing Works and Related Trades Union. January 15, 1937. TO THE EDITOR 01? THE PRESS. Sir.—l imagine that workers like myself ai-e deeply interested in the freezing works dispute which threatens to engulf the whole Dominion. I am completely in sympathy with any moVement among the workers for the betterment of their positions, but being (I hope) a sensible man, I realise that there must be some limit to their demands. I don't think the strikers in Auckland realise that. I am sure that if the present Labour Government were in opposition, it would not realise or recognise it, but the responsibility of office has sobered Ministers, and now they are beginning to see that their protegees are possessed by an insatiable appetite. Here are we thousands eager for work at reasonable wages, and we cannot get it. Here are those butchers earning wages that appear to us princely; yet they are not satisfied and clamour for more.

I quote from "The Press": The pork slaughtermen in Auckland for the .month of November earned wages from £7 14s 7d a week to £ll 8s a week, of from 9s 6d to 7s 3d an hour. Why am I, as an unemployed man, scratching along on the unemployed pittance, asked to sympathise with and support such fortunate fellow workers, who, as compared with me, are veritable plutocrats?

There is this further. These high wages—l almost called them excessive wages—are in the end paid by us. The pork butcher who drew £ll 9s for the week ending December 19 was j paid, not by the employer, but by the public, to whom the high wages were I passed on. I hope it will be realised that any such increases have to be paid by the public; and I hope, too, the worker will begin to wonder if his sympathy with the present strikers, who earn pounds where he gets shillings, is not entirely misplaced. Why .should ;a Labour Government tolerate ,an aristocracy of workers like this? a nian who draws between £9 and v £ 10 'a week, as* compared, with another unemjalayjed worker's £2 or £3, is not an aristocrat,.it is time we were revising our dictionaries and giving a new interpretation to the word "aristocrat." Let us help the workers, but begin at the bottom, not at the top.— Yours, etc., JOHN WORKLESS. January 15, 1937.