AWAY FROM WORK

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 11, 14 January 1941, Page 6

AWAY FROM WORK

UNION'S REPLY

JOBS NOT READY

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Some clothing manufacturers have been loud in their complaints that girls on their workroom staffs did not return to work on the day their factories, reopened after the holidays. Your paper took everything the manufacturers said for granted and printed some hard things about the girls concerned. The Minister of Industries &ud Commerce took a more reasonable view, although he took the manufacturers' complaint too seriously—he should have known by experience that they usually cry before they are hurt. It is time that someone with a knowledge of the facts, and with no axe to grind, took up the matter on behalf of the workers.

It is customary in the clothing trade to finish all work in hand before Christmas. After the holidays new orders are started and it is not often that these orders : are urgent. Even if they are, there is little for the girls to do until the cutters have had a day or two to prepare the work for them. Many of the girls remember that in previous years, when they went prepared to start work on the appointed day, they were told to stand down for another week until something had been prepared for them. That is happening now to some of the girls who did return on January 6. Some have been stood down until January 13 and others until January 20, and have been to me seeking other employment because they cannot afford to be idle. Surely if the employer has the right to expect .his workers to return on a certain date, the workers have the right to expect employment on that date. It appears that the average employer has a keen sense of the workers' duty to him but no sense of his duty 'o the workers. When he stands workers down to suit his own convenience he doesn't worry about how they are going to live in the meantime, but still he thinks that they should be there at his beck and call. , ■

The workers in the clothing trade had a very strenuous year in 1939. The work is hard and exacting at ordinary times, but last year overtime was worked, practically without limit, no notice being taken of the provision in the Factories Act limiting the amount of overtime for female workers to 90 hours. Late last year the manager of one of the largest clothing factories in the city said to me, "My girls are tired. They have done a great job, and are still doing their best, but their best is not what it was earlier in the year. They need a good holiday and have earned it." These remarks could be applied to the girls in other factories also, and if some of them did come back a day or two late so as to add the weekend to their holiday, it is nothing to make a song about. They will be back on the job now like giants refreshed. There is absolutely nothing in the suggestion that work of military importance has been held up. It is not very long since the Prime Minister, speaking in Parliament, paid a tribute to the workers in the clothing trade for the way they had met every demand for military clothing, and this they will continue to do, because they have as much patriotism as any other section of the community. The suggestion that they are lacking in patriotism is one of which the employers concerned should be ashamed, not only because it is unjust to the. workers, but because it is using the war as an industrial weapon.—l am, etc., E. B. NEWTON, Secretary, Wellington Clothing Trades Union.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —A correspondent who writes under the heading "Away From Work" ends up with the following:—"Every one of theni should be made to think of the boys overseas for at least two minutes every day." This statement is rather peculiar. It is like suggesting that the sun should be made to rise. It is probably by very reason of their boys being overseas that the girls cannot concentrate on the factory work. That probably has something to do with the saying: "For where your treasure is there shall your heart be also.". —I am, etc., RULE BRITANNIA. .