The Daily Telegraph. MONDAY, JULY 29, 1901. TRADE AWARDS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 9299, 29 July 1901, Page 4

The Daily Telegraph. MONDAY, JULY 29, 1901. TRADE AWARDS.

The question of fixing wages and hours of labor under statute law possesses an interest for local bodies apart from that involved in the rates of pay to their employes. If we are to have fatuous decisions in favor of geographical differentiation in scales of wages, the tendency will be to thwart the general progress of towns and to encourage the formation of squalid suburbs. Take for example the two latest awards in the printing trade. One of these enacts that in Timaru a certain rate of wages shall be paid for type-setting, and another rate may be. paid outside its boundaries. This applies to overtime as well as the work done in the regular day, and to make the award still more farcical the tollday list is larger for the town than for establishments outside it. The second award is in regard to machinists, who if they work in ISTapier, for example, must be paid eight shillings per week more than if they were employed outside the borough boundary. Obviously, if this sort of thing were to obtain, it might tend to raise the price of land at Awatoto, and to relievo. Napier of the presence of some of its existing industrial institutions, which considered by itself, and at present, is probably not of much consequence. But a tendency of this kind going on as the colony progressed would lead not only to a diminution in the value of town property, but also to the creation of slums. It is bad for any district when it becomes too much specialised, and bad for the community also. Of course in the end the evil would find its own remedy, as it has in England, but that is rather an argument in favor of preventing the evil as much the cheaper and better course. Those who know what suffering had to be endured before some of the industrial suburbs of large towns in the Mother Country were made decently clean and healthy need , no further reference to this view of the question. When we add the grotesque unfairness of differential rates which involve anything more than allowance for rental variations, quite enough has been said to show how indefensible are such awards as those alluded to. • This provides a reason why all local bodies should look with a favorable eye upon the contentions of the more intelligent among the trades union leaders, who advocate colonial awards in trade disputes. Whatever may be said for or against State interference in wages disputes, if we are to have it (and apparently we must) the common sense plan is to conserve as much fairness to all the parties concerned as is possible.