ALLIANCE OF LABOUR

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 142, 13 December 1923, Page 11

ALLIANCE OF LABOUR

EXTENDING ITS FUNCTIONS

CONFERENCE TO BE GALLED

NEXT MONTH.

Encouraged by the results achieved in the last twelve or eighteen months, both industrially and politically, as the outcome of closer organisation, and impressed with the need for further strengthening the solidarity of the industrial movement, Labour —or a certain section of its forces —apparently is seeking to set its house in still more efficient order. With the idea of effecting greater unity between the various industrial bodies, the New Zealand Alliance of Labour, which embraces some thousands of workers in some of the principal industries of the Dominion,-; is calling a conference of union representatives „to. be held in Wellington on Bth January next, when several important industrial matters will be discussed.

The" principal items on the agenda will be the widening of.the'functions of• the Alliance of Labour so as/ to embrace within its constitution all organised wage-earners in the Dominion j) discussion upon the basic wage rate of £3 16s Id per week set down by the Arbitration Court ior unskilled workers, which is considered too low; and the establishment of a Labour Information Bureau and Research Department. Delegates have been invited to the conference representing trades and labour councils from the various districts, unions that are affiliated with the Alliance of Labour, and all national federations of labour unions. Some labour bodies are neither affiliated with the alliance, nor linked up nationally, and it is being urged that these bodies should be represented at the conference through the trades and labour councils. It is contemplated by the alliance officials that the conference will sit for several days, as one question in particular, the Arbitration Court's minimum wage, is a very much-discussed topic in Labour circles at the present time, and is bound to be exhaustively threshed out. As a matter of fact, there appear to be two main subjects of conversation at union and other industrial headquarters just now the raising of the minimum wage of the unsiklled worker, and the result of the English elections. Although the alliance embraces something over 50,000 workers in several large industries, many- organisations have not seen fit, for various reasons, to link up with the big movement. The tonstfitution provides for organisation on the lines of class and industry, and in effect only those craft unions may affiliate which are in the first place linked up with a Dominion federation embracing kindred unions. • Thus, for instance, the mining industry as a whok constitutes one department, and the transport department-is' composed of all workers engaged in waterside, railway and other sections of transport activity While several of the largest and most important industries are represented in" the alliance, there still remain outside it several bodies which, not being organised in accordance with requirements of the constitution of the alliance, are unable to come within its fold. In pursuance of its policy to do everything g>ssible to organise the workers of the ominion upon the lines of class and industry, the alliance hopes to gain the admission of sections of industry which are not yet affiliated. _ The basic wage is being made the subject of propaganda, in order that public sympathy may be gained in support of an appeal for an increase in the minimum wage. It is likely that an organised campaign will-be instituted short-

The proposal to establish information bureaux is in accordance with the movement in other parts of the world. Its object is to facilitate the tabulation of information in respect to conditions of industry unemployment, . wages, and other matters affecting the Labour move- ™ v sT Tall T ght thr°ughout the world. A central agency, by kepinn- in touch with the information \3f n various countries would act as a distr? butmg office of accurate data to ali its sources of information. The alliance bureau, it ,g proposed, would deal with industrial matters only, information and general statistics of political importance being handled by the research H» partment of the National Labour Party'