"AWAY FROM WORK"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 14, 17 January 1941, Page 11

"AWAY FROM WORK"

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —In answer to various correspondents who accuse me personally of disloyalty and think it amazing of me to write as I did, may I state that my son was among the first to enlist and I personally went back to work at the call of the employers for married machinists to come to work. The long hours expected of us and the quantity of work required, in conjunction with running a home, proved too much for me, however. So you see I am not disloyal, only sticking up for the other girls. I have been a clothing worker for years, both as a machinist and in charge, and I know how loyal the girls are and how hard they work. As Mr. Newton points out, the work is arduous and exacting. No one denies the workers of Britain are heroes and if the war comes here the clothing workers along with all other workers will prove their worth. Mr. Newton proves my suggestion that some employers do not care how the worker lives if he cares to close down work for a long period. The employer does not always co-operate with the Government. Some time ago they gave us a cost-of-living bonus. Now we worked under a bonus system. Our employer told us we would have to do two and a half garments a week extra to cover this and be lowered our price per article. So instead of good workers getting a rise, we got a cut, as our bonus automatically fell. Do you wonder why I said "getting our own back"? It is not the Government the girls are getting at but the individual employer who does not play the game and then squeals to the Government and the Press. When we try to explain our side we get accused of disloyalty.—l am, etc.,

CLOTHING MACHINIST,

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—lt is. with feelings of disgust, in a time like this when everyone should do his or her bit, that every day we hear of hold-ups and stopwork meetings, overstaying leave, etc. Just imagine our boys at the front, also nurses, risking their lives every day and night while here in New Zealand girls are returning to work when they like and men are leaving stuff on wharves and slaughterers are letting sheep stay in yards to deteriorate seriously. Nor can I imagine what the employers are thinking of. In my opinion, and I am speaking as one who has experience with men during the last war when men were scarce, any man or woman who will not submit to ordinary rules in connection with their work should immediately be told that they were not needed any more. It causes inconvenience, I know, but their employers would know that they were not submitting to the pranks of irresponsible people. There is another phase of this matter: men or women who deliberately flout their employers cannot be an asset, and the first loss is always the best, so out with them at once. —I am, etc.,

DISGUSTED,