EFFECT ON WAGES

Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 47, 24 August 1920, Page 8

EFFECT ON WAGES

THOUSANDS A DAY LOST

ALL INDUSTRIES AFFECTED,

The effect of no power, gas or electric, was immediately felt to day in a large number of factories employing many hands. There will be' small wages taken this week because of failure of machinery to run for want of power. Some thousands of pounds a day will be lest in wages. Gas is used, not only for motive power, but for other purposes, and no asurance could be gathered from the Gas Company to-day that, even if coal were immediately available, gas could be at once supplied. ; "We are entirely in the hands of the Coal Board," remarked the secretary of the'Gas Company (Mr. J. H. Helliwell). "They will not allow us to accumulate stocks. We are constantly running down, and,when the position becomes really acute, then the board, will let us luve some coal to go on with,; until we get run right down again, and then we have to draw such hand-to-mouth sup- I plies from a. hulk—just two or three days', supply at a time. "We are drawing no supplies from Newcastle. There happens to be a- boat in port with 1100 tons on board. That is not for us. If the watersiders work the coal, then there will be gas. Mr. Bruce,, the secretary, says they will work coal under normal conditions. I dor't know what that means; but until we have the coal there will not be any gas." NO GAS FOR COOKING. Mr. HeUiwell also pointed out that there were 12,000 gas cookers in use in Wellington, to say nothing of gas rings. The greater number of these were in the jiomes of working people; moreover, there were some hundreds of new houses built or building in which gas was installed as the only means of cooking and. heating. There would then be much inconvenience, even suffering, among people deprived of gas. For even with ranges and fireplaces they could not get sufficient coal, and they thus fell back upon gas for cooking and warming. The stoppage of the trams and e'ectrfc light was no doubt highly inconvenient, but it was also -a very serious thing for both industries and homes for the gas to be cut off. Mr. HeUiwell could give not.the slightest indication of when gas .would be available. "If we have coal," ne said, "we can make gas, no coal, no ga*-" . ■