NO. 13 SCHEME ANOMALIES

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22768, 21 July 1939, Page 15

NO. 13 SCHEME ANOMALIES

TO TOT EDrroa or TBS OTBS3. Sir.—The conditions and wages which afflict the Public Works Department labourers are due to two factors: their comparatively low economic power and their organic separation from the labourers of ihe cities. The first is not capable of an early solution, but the second is. The General Labourers' Unions, of which the labourers of the cities and smaller towns are members, in general, are concentrations _at centres of economic and political power, hence the superior wages and conditions they are able to command; and the Public Works Department labourers should be in the same organisations, a move which would immediately raise their status. If they put the right work into their union they will make it. They should never have been organised outside the General Labourers’ Unions. Rural woskers of another type, farm labourers, will eventually find that their Interests are closely related to those of the small farmers, whose differentiation from the prosperous farmers and development as firm allies of the workers in general will be promoted rather than retarded by the formation of a separate farmers political party .--Yours, etc C. F. SAUNDERS. July 19, 1939.