40-HOUR WEEK

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 74, 24 September 1938, Page 10

40-HOUR WEEK

NORTH COUNTRY COMMENT

SHIPPING CONDITIONS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, August 29, The "Newcastle Journal" comments: "M. Daladier has. been . growling over the French 40-hour week as crippling French industry. There is a British country which also has the 40-hour week—New Zealand. The complaint there is not that it cripples industry, but farming, where the hours cannot be so drastically legislated for, and whence labour consequently drifts to the towns with their shorter working week. And, asks a New Zealand friend, what would Monsieur' Daladier say if he had also to pay some of the wages, which are thestatutory weekly minimum in^Newj Zealand. ; "M. Daladier would also be quiteji satisfied if, in normal procedure and1 not under strike conditions, one of his big French liners. scheduled to leavej Marseilles on Thursday could not leave until the following Tuesday be 4 cause of dockside labour. Yet this can and does normally happen in Wei-j lington 'or Auckland—e.g., Thursday// rain, therefore no work, beyond one! hour necessary to claim a half-day's;' pay. Friday, ditto; Saturday, a halfday and claimed to hold the men*& usual monthly meeting; Sunday, diea non; Monday, a public holiday, therejfore no work; Tuesday, work. " i "So, adds my New Zealander, the French Government and British ship: pers need not be so short-tempered over the Marseilles strike. That, at any rate, is an open strike, not a legajl and continuous subversion of the shipping industry."