WHARF LABOUR

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 15, 19 January 1914, Page 2

WHARF LABOUR

EVILS OF CASUAL EMPLOYMENT PRIME MINISTER'S SUGGESTIONS. VIEWS OF DUNEDIN EMPLOYERS. (BY TELEGRAPH— SPKCUL TO TUB POST.) DUNEDIN, This Day. The suggestions as to equalising labour at the wharves of the main ports of the Dominion have not been received in Dunedin with enthusiasm. It is stated, authoritatively that a majority of the members of the Otago Harbour Board favour the principle of the tentative proposals submitted recently to harbour boards by the Prime Minister (Kfc. Hon. W. F. Massey), but few of them go further than to admit the need of a better system of control and distribution of work than the methods in. practice. Shipping representatives contend that in awards and agreements provision has already been made for counterbalancing tho inevitable irregularity of employment, this provision being a higher rate of pay for waterside work than is provided for labour requiring quite as much, if not more, skill. It is allegecf that if commissions be appointed to compensate workmen on wharves for lack of work to do on occasions, similar provision should be made for all skilled and unskilled workers whose work out of doors is rendered casual by weather and the fluctuations of trade and enterprise. Critics of the shipping companies trading to and from New Zealand say very plainly that the chief objection shipowners have" to the suggestions under notice is the feat of losing profitr The shipping companies are not perturbed by that charge, _ which they characterise as ridiculous in face of the wages they pay to waterside workers. They point out that it is extremely improbable that control by a commission would increase tho wages of workers. It would rather tend, they submit, to have the opposite effect, and they cannot see how a limitation of the number of men to be employed at the wharves would reduce tho demand for employment. It is estimated that at least 40 per cent, of the waterside workers in the Dominion would resent any curtailment of opportunity to earn a great deal more than £2 10s per week. As to purging the Avaterfronts of • "undesirables," critics and supporters of the Prime Minister's suggestions are together in recognising the difficulty of dealing effectively with such a class of men, who apparently would rather run the risk of not getting more than two days' work a week on the wharves than accept the _ risk of obtaining steady occupation in tho country, while it is admitted that it would be better^ for the country if that class of hanger-on at some ports were eliminated from the ranks of waterside workers. Many of those who control ships and wharves are averse from supporting any scheme of control that would either penalise the real workers at the waterside or enhance the position of the "undesirable."' In regard to the cost of establishing ft superannuation scheme such as the one I outlined, it is stated that shipping companies should hardly be expected to shoulder all the burden, nor should it be expected that waterside workers would be able to contribute .much towards a superannuation scheme unless they were guaranteed regular permanent employment annually, a condition not advocated by the _ promoters of the proposal for commissions of control. Representative men contend that the cost 'would fallon the public, of whom many have nothing better than casual work at poorer rates of pay than those provided for waterside workers.