WORK AND WAGES.

Evening Star, Issue 11512, 1 April 1901, Page 3

WORK AND WAGES.

That white slavery existed in Protection Melbourne -was asserted by the Right Hon. G. H. Reid during his Federal crusade in that city a month ago. The statement was, of course, denied, but the following case, heard on Friday week, bears out Mr Reid as to the workers' condition in Victoria:—A girl told the Collingwood Bench that she worked ninety-four hours in a week for 7s. On one day she put in twenty-one hours—from 4 a.m. to 1 a.m. Hor employer, a baker, admitted that she worked eighty-six hours, and that he had stopped half a crown out of her wages for the registry office fee. A humane Bench, as has bech already stated in our columns, merely fined this slavedriver 5s and costs-'

Caste feeling (reports the 'Lyttelton Times') seems to run high at the freezing works in Canterbury. Mr F. Waymouth, manager of the Canterbury Froeen Meat Company, stated at the Conciliation Board yesterday that if the companies were compelled to build rooms for all the men to have their lunch in, they would have to form whole villages of dining rooms at the different works. The slaughtermen would not dine with the men of the gut-house, and the carpenters and engineers would not dine with either.

Crooked fingers, crooked legs, cuts, bruises, " and various things " are the risks that slaughtermen have to run when working at their vocation, according to statements made by unionists before the Conciliation Board yesterday. Under these circumstances, the men ask for higher wages and better conditions of labor.

In addressing the Conciliation Board at Christchurch on Friday, Mr F. Waymouth, manager of the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company, said that the system of unionism was bringing about something like a deadlock in connection with freezing companies. In what might be termed a compound business it was impossible to deal with the demands of the men in detail, and this was a principle that had been strongly opposed by a Judge of the Arbitration Court. That was the fifth or sixth time he had been called before the Conciliation Board in connection with totally different trade disputes. The carpenters, the engineers, the coopers, and the slaughtermen all had their.special rules, and probably, in a few months' time, the slaughter-house laborers would have a complete set, which they would ask should be accepted. If there must be unionism, there should be one union of all men. employed at the freezing works. If the companies had to meet the demands of the different unions in detail, it would be almost impossible to