LABOUR LEGISLATION. NEW DEMANDS IN ENGLAND.

Evening Post, Volume LVII, Issue 33, 9 February 1899, Page 2

LABOUR LEGISLATION. NEW DEMANDS IN ENGLAND.

The following programme of the legislation asked for by the Trades Union Congress has (says the Age's London correspondent) been 1 forwarded to each Minister and ex-Minister, and to every member of Parliament. A categorical answer is, if possible, to be obtained in each case. The questions are supposed to represent the irreducible minimum of the demands made by the Labour Party : — 1. Are you in favour of the qualification for voters being reduced to the lowest possible point? That the cost of registration be a charge on the public funds? That parochial relief shall not involve disfranchisement ? The abolition of plural voting, and that the Returning Officers' fees in Parliamentary elections shall be paid for out of public funds? 2. Would you be prepared to vote for a Bill providing for a separate valuation of land and improvements, for the assessment of taxation and rates upon the full true yearly value of land, whether in use or not? 3. Are you in favour of the Government introducing at once drastic legislation on the question of the deleterious effects of phosphorus and lead poisoning on the health of the work people, and would you be prepared to join in a movement which might be established for tho securing of this object? ' 4. Are you in favour of a further extension of the Workmen's Compensation Act so as to provide for its application to all trades and industries, both in land and on sea, and also for the Act to apply from the time of accident, and for the removal of other anomalies of the present Act? 5. Are you in favour of a better administration of the fair wages resolution passed in the House of Commons in February, 1891, so as to provide for a minimum wage of 24s per week for labourers in the various Government Departments, and the levelling up of the wages rate to equal those paid to all artisans by private employers ; also that all contractors for Government work shall be compelled to pay the standard wages and observe the hours of labour Current in the district? 6. Are ,you in favour of a Miners' Eight Hours Bill? 7. Are you in favour of the Bill introduced last session Uy Mr. Samuel, M.P., on the subject of steam engines v. boilers (persons in charge), and will you also vote for . a Boilers Registration Inspection Bill? 8. Are you in favour of urging upon the Government at once the imperative necessity of introducing a scheme providing old age pensions to all workers? 9. Would you vote for the Particulars Clause of the Factory and Workshops Act being further extended and applied to all industries where piecework prevails? 10. Are you in favour of the Government compensating the dependent relatives of workers in Her Majesty's dockyards and factories who die whilst in the service of the Crown, and who have had deducted from their par certain' sums towards pensions ?