" WORK IS SCARCE."

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 107, 7 May 1909, Page 8

" WORK IS SCARCE."

A TRADES HALL VERDICT. PAINTERS, CARPENTERS, LABOURERS. A lugubrious aspect of the Trades Hall was to be seen by any casual visitor who entered the precincts to-day. Several unemployed tradesmen and labourers were around, and their outlook j on affairs was tinctured, naturally ' enough, by their present inability to find work. Unemployed painters predominated. They agi^&d that present, prospects made it seem, likely that there 'wo «id be a good deal of painting work to be done next spring, but one of them, pertinently observed that he would need a good many meads before tben. Mr. F. Reyiing, secretary of the Painters and Decorators' Union, remarked that he had about a dozen names of unemployed members on the books just now. Then there, were a great many members whose employment was only casual, and whose earnings disappeared entirely in paying their way between jobs. What were called "steady jobs" were hard 'to find just now, and a man who got two weeks' continuous work was lucky. The reason was that "there were no big jobs going." There was a drift of tradesmen away from "Wellington. One who had sa-ved some money during brisker times went away to the Argentine this week, and two more would be leaving for Sydney this-aifcernoon. These wero three cases out of many. One painter had heard of a prospective job in the Sctth Island, bnt he said he could not niford to risk his last few pounds in travelling there to perhaps find the job gone, and a thousand miles •of unwalkable water between himself and his Sydney home. Going away to jobs, said the secretary,, vas not very profitable. One Wellington painter went to Hamilton, in the Auckland province, in answer to a telegram from a firm of painters in that town. He had to pay his passage both ways — and the job lasted two weeks. There was no need to get a ready reckoner to find cut the profit from that! "SORRY HE CAME." A paintc* f rom the United JKingdom said he bad been in Wellington for two months, and had not had one full week's work in all the time. He had been in Wellington before, and he thought he could not go wrong in coming back to the city, where he was well known, and had always had a good name as a worker ; but he was sorry, .now, that he came. "Work is not to be got,'.' he ejaculated ; "it's not because I don't look for it, and it's not because I can't do it when I get it. The trade's rotten, and I wish I'd stopped away when I 'was' away." A mate of the speaker's added that as he (.the speaker) had taken a job at scrubbing out a building, it ought to be evident that he was a willing worker. i CARPENTERS AND JOINERS. "Things are bad, still," was the reply of Mr. J. T. Stobart, secretary of the Carpenters' and Joiners' Union. He would not say that they were as bad as they had been a month ago, but they were .bad all the same. However, there were a good many jobs being started now, aad when the outer structures were advanced a bit and the call came for carpenters and joiners, there should be fewer unemployed on the books than there were to-day. He really thougtt't men in his trade had reason to feel hopeful for the f uture ; the fact was they had had such a bad summer that the winter could not be any worse, he thought. BUILDERS' LABOURERS. Mr. F. Bisowne, secretary of the Building Trades Labourers' Union, said it was the case that excavation work for a few big buildings in the city had given work to a number of labourers, Tjut this demand for \ workers was offset by a slackening of suburban building. Kilbirnie, Maranui, and Seatoiu, ali of which he had been through lately, were noticeably slack, and the men who were out of work were more than enough to make up the city needs. The wet weather made things a bit worse for the outdoor labourer, but that was not the chief reason for the present state of the market. The improvement reported a month or so ago was shortlived, and things had got bad again before the broken weather set in. BUTCHERS' PROSPECTS BETTER. Mr. iA. Cooper, secretary of the Butchers' and Slaughtermen's Union, said that, although there were some members unemployed, prospects were better than they had been. Stock was cheaper than it used to be — only for that, a great many poor people would have to be doing without meat — and the increased demand had resulted in more shops being opened and more hands employed. There were four new shops in Wellington which were making a trade in cheap meat over the counter.