"TAKE POT LUCK"

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 108, 8 May 1923, Page 8

"TAKE POT LUCK"

WHEN LOOKING FOR A JOB

EFFECT OF WATERSIDERS'

DECISION.

There appears to be some division of opinion on the waterfront as to the wisdom of going back to the old system of labour engagement, which, in .view of last week's ballot, will be reverted to on Thursday morning. The proposal to abandon the new scheme, whereby the work of the port was liimted to 900 men to carry out, was only carried by a majority of 97 votes in a poll of 868 financial members of the union, therefore it will be seen that opinion amongst the watersiders was fairly evenly divided on the matter.

"The men who voted for going back to the old system have committeed suicide," remarked one watersider when discussing the subject to-day. His view was that the new scheme should have been given a trial for six months at least instead of only about seven weeks. The winter would then have been paßsed through, and some sort of idea gained as to how hours could be levelled up during the three months of the year, which, from the watersiders' point of view, are the most lean of the whole twelve months. Had this been done each of the 900 men would have had a chance of picking up something. The scheme having been thrown out, however, it was now competent for anybody to join the union and swell the ranks of those who were seeking a means of existence on the wharf. "If things are bad in the town and country this winter," he remarked, "it won't even be an existence on the waterfront, for every Tom, Dick, and Harry will be down there looking for a job, and there won't be enough work to go round. The good men will get preference and the rest wiD have to take pot luck. That's what having turned down the new scheme will mean."

Another man thought the reversal to the old system wrong in that it would once more enable a "greedy man to snap up every, job that was going to the detriment of the man who preferred to be content with making a fair living by working for one employer only. Under the new system of control which had been introduced the employers were given the right to select the men they wanted from among the ranks of the 900, arid there was no opportunity for men to offer their services to another employer as soon as the job he was engaged on terminated. Under the old system, however, a man was free to take as much work as he could get, and this often meant that some men were able to get much more employment than others. There was no "levelling up" in any such process as that. "This new scheme would never have worked, and it is a good thing it has been thrown out," declared a man interested in the waterfront problem from the employers' standpoint. "An> employer might suddenly want a gang to take on an urgent job and find that all the good men had been previously selected. This was unsatisfactory and meant that the employer had to . pay award wages to men who he would have.preferred not to have taken in comparison with other more expert gangs. Going back to the old system will allow of a greater freedom of choice in the selection of gangs."