LINES ABOUT LABOUR.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 142, 16 June 1906, Page 12

LINES ABOUT LABOUR.

A petition is being circulated for signature in Auckland asking Parliament to grant statutory preference to unionists. The Queensland Worker publishes a suggestion offered in all seriousness by an ultra-white Australian, that any man employing coloured labour "ought to be put in gaol and fined heavily." "Artizan" writes in the Auckland Weekly News : — There is a community of interest between the farmer and artisan, which both parties so far fail to perceive. There is room for education on both sides, which would probably remove ill-feeling and misunderstanding and be of mutual advantage. The New South Wales Master Builders' Association denies that the building trade is in a flourishing condition in that State, and is of opinion that "if ten times the quantity of work on hand was suddenly made available master builders would readily find sufficient labour without hunting for men." I "Artizan," in the Weekly News, again complains of the poor rates paid for piece-work in some of the Auckland factories. During the past week (he says) a case of a poorly-paid girl in one of the smaller factories wns brought under my notice. A young woman working all the week earned the munificent/ amount of 4s 6d making shirts. These shirts are retailed by one of the principal shops in town. Mr. Gardagh, secretary, oi the West Australian Goldfields Trades and Labour Council, gives a depressing account of industrial conditions over there. The number of unemployed, he says, is very /i-eat, and never in the history of the goldfields was the depression so bad as the present time. Hundreds of ablebodied men are seen daily sitting at the mines at the changes of shifts, waiting days for the chance of employment. A communication has been forwarded from Glassford Creek to the Queensland Minister for Mines alleging the dangerous^ nature of employment at the copper mines there ; also complaining of "the omission of the local mines inspector to inspect the mine, whereby the management are encouraged to neglect certain work necessary to the safe working of an open cut, and the safeguarding of the lives of the men employed therein." In tho manifesto of the Australian Workers' Union, just issued, "the policy," it says, "must be one of marking time. It is, we know, asking a great deal of members to expect them to continue so long working for lower wages and worse conditions than should obtain, when they find that that Arbitration Court which had lured them on with the prospect of a speedy and peaceful settlement of their differences with their employers for the present closed against them, and that a peaceful settlement is, at the best, still some distance off." , Labour was very scarce all through the summer months (writes the Hawkes Bay correspondent of the Otago Witness), and zf it bad nob been for "wtlc Maoris, some of the crops would not have been harvested at all. Much sympathy is expressed for the Maoris, because of the blighted potato crop. It it, no doubt, hard on some of them, but will do tne majority no harm ;. many who do nothing from shearing to shearing will have to turn Vo. A fair day's work does a man morjy good, provided he is able, than a day in a billiard saloon. The Maoris, as a rule, are good workers, and do their best to do the work* as their employer wishes it done. They cannot work without a mate, even for a short time. I . Work in Auckland for this period of the year (writes "Artizan") is on the whole good. The inclement weather last week caused a rather serious break i in tho earnings of those who are com- 1 pelle'd to work in the open. The building trade is fair, though there are a number of men not getting full time. The painting trade is better for thin period of the year than for some years past. _ Furniture workers are fairly busy, iron trades are dull. Work is still rather plentiful on the wharves. There are a number of men who have come in from the country for the winter looking for work in town. There is a, growing demand from the country districts for bushfellers, and in some districts for navvies. The strikes in the Pas-de-Calais and the Nord departments of Franco (writes the Spectator) show no sign of decreasing in violence. At Lieven the gendarmerie barracks were attacked, and at Billy-Montigny the Prefect of the Pas-de-Calais has been shut up in the railway station. At Lens tho house of M. Reumaux, the director of the mines, has been sacked, and troops sent to relieve it were repulsed. At Denaim, in the Nord, the Socialist Mayor has appealed for troops, since he is unable to restrain the rioters, and the miners on strike there are preventing by force the employees of other trades from going to work. Several lives have been lost, and the whole district is in a state of anarchy. Strikes of printers have begun in various provinces, and in Paris the strike of postmen still continues. Throughout the Government is keeping a steady head. It has refused to listen to the postmen's demands, and M. Barthou, the Minister of Public Works, has courageously gone down to Lens himself to endeavour to bring the miners to reason. There is sound advice in the recent inunifesto of the Australian Workers' Union. It says-.— "With an Arbitration Court to which they have been so often told to look for redress closed, for the time at least, against them, and with its doors hedged round with 60 many technicalities even when they can bo opened, and with the Pastoral Associationd still persisting in their refusal to confer, few fuir minded persons could blame the members if they attempted to secure by their own strength tho justice they could secure in no other 1 way. But tempting though this course is, it should not bo followed. Not that members would be breaking any law in So doiug. The Arbitration Court law, according to the High Court, does not operate until members have actually entered into an engagement with the pa6toralists. But there ia a higlier consideration. Members must be loyal to , the people and Parliament of the Commonwealth, who have established a tribunal to preserve industrial peace, and who cannot be held responsible for tho manner in which the courts have narrowed and minimised its power and usefulness." When the representatives of the Australian Workers' Union met at the Sydney Trades Hall in the early part of the year they did not issue a manifesto, as had been the custom in previous year*, because of tho incoming of the Commonyealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act, under which it was decided to register as an industrial union. It was seen by tho delegates to be necessary to confor with the Pastoralists' Unions ol the diffeient States, or at least with such unions as had local agreements with the Australian Workers' Union. Henco it was that the policy for tho next shearing season could not bo issued. This has now been drawn up, and duly signed by the president nnd general secretary. It fixes the minimum rates of pay for New South Walts, Queensland, and South Australia, in which States there aro upwards of twenty thousand shearers. Farming to-day calls for as much education as any trade or profession in the country. But it k a particular education.,