RAILWAY WORKERS IN AUSTRALIA

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22057, 3 April 1937, Page 9

RAILWAY WORKERS IN AUSTRALIA

♦ CONDITIONS COMPARED WITH THOSE IN DOMINION Considerable interest in the recent social and industrial legislation in New Zealand was found in Australia by the Hon M. Connelly, M.L.C., who has returned from a visit to the Commonwealth, during which he toured extensively in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland. Mr Connelly said in an interview yesterday that everywhere in Australia, both employers and workers were following the development of the Government’s programme with close and sympathetic interest. As a former railwayman and former vice-president of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, Mr Connelly was anxious to compare working conditions of Australian railwayman with conditions in New Zealand. “Representatives of the railwayman repeatedly expressed their enthusiasm for our Government’s action in giving the staff more leisure and affording young men wonderful opportunities for obtaining permanent work,” he said. “One leader of Australian railwayman told me that our policy had given them new heart in their agitation for similar conditions.” Mr Connelly said that while there were some methods of railway working in Australia which could be applied in the Dominion, the New Zealand railways did not compare unfavourably with the Commonwealth system in spite of the advantage of wider gauges in some of the states. In Queensland and New South Waites a

40-hour week was worked, and in some cases in Victoria a 96-hour fortnight. All the railwayman's organisations were pressing strongly for a reduction of the hours of work, and they had an example in New Zealand which would prove a valuable weapon in their agitation.