THE,LABOUR MOVEMENT

Evening Star, Issue 21077, 14 April 1932, Page 2

THE,LABOUR MOVEMENT

[By J.S.S.] Brief contribution! on matters with reference to the Labour Movement are invited. INTERNAL LOAN FAVOURED. The policy of a large internal loan for the relief of unemployment is one which has been espoused for some time by Labour people in New Zealand. Support for the idea is found in the action of tho Victorian Labour Government, which, backed by citizens, proposes to finance a two-year plan for the relief of unemployment by raising a fund of £7,000,000, one-half by an internal tenyear loan and the remainder by taxation. With this money productive work will bo provided at award rates of wages. The dole will be superseded except in the case of women. A Labour official comments as follows on the Victorian scheme: —“ The policy of an internal loan has been advocated by New Zealand Labour for a year at least. Such a loan is not the radical method of dealing with unemployment, but it has this advantage: it is the only immediate practicable means of handling the problem on the basis of award wages—the one basis _ on which the large-scale demoralisation of the workers is impossible. A two-year release by such a policy from the pressure of devising hand-to-mouth schemes at a poverty-stricken level would give the Government an opportunity to tackle the question fundamentally.” * * * * PUBLIC WORKS DISMISSALS. Mr A. Cook, secretary of tho New Zealand Workers’ Union, expresses the view that much misery and poverty will bo caused by the proposed Public Works policy brought down by Mr Coates. By the end of the present month 5,000 men would be dismissed, which meant that a total of 25,000 people—those men, their wives and children—would be affected by the legislation. Storekeepers and retailers near Public Works camps would also lie directly affected. Tho Government for ten years had had an agreement with the New Zealand Workers’ Union, and it was regrettable that this agreement had been broken.

THE FACTORIES ACT. Proposals for the amendment of the Factories Act and the Shops and Offices Act were placed before the Minister of Labour (Hon. A. Hamilton) by a deputation from the New Zealand Trades and Labour Councils’ Federation. The deputation also advocated the publication and release of the report of the Shops and Offices Act Commission which sat about two years ago. The Minister promised to consider tho points raised by the deputation, and said that if there were anomalies, as had been suggested, he would see what could be done to rectify the position. The secretary of the Auckland Trades and Labour Council, Mr J, Purtell, considered that the Factories Act should bo amended so that any boy or woman under eighteen years of age who had been employed in a factory for five of the fourteen days immediately preceding the temporary closing of the factory for cleaning or repairing of machinery should be paid at the ordinary rate of wages for the time the factory was so closed, provided that any such payment should not exceed two weeks. Employers in Auckland, he said, had given boys and girls one week’s notice to finish employment on Christmas Eve, and had refused to pay for holidays prescribed in the Factories Act. Mr Purtell also urged an amendment of the clause in the Factories Act which gave the court power to work adult male workers unlimited hours, in spite of the fact that they may not be contained in the exemption schedules. The Auckland brickwork burners, he added, had to work eighty-four hours per week, despite the fact that the Act provided for a forty-eight-hour week. These workers were not paid any overtime. It had been decided by the Court of Appeal that these workers could be worked unlimited hours if the award prescribed such hours. It was mentioned by Mr Purtell that a Shops and Offices Act Commission had sat some two years ago, but that its report had not yet been printed or circulated. He understood that the delay had lieen because one or two members of the commission desired to make a minority report. Mr Purtell contended that the report should be circulated for consideration. The Shops and Offices Act did not prescribe a six-day week, and from what ho could gather one of the recommendations of the commission provided for that. At Auckland cleaners were worked seven days a week, and the court refused to put a clause in the Act providing for a sixday week.

In his reply, the Minister said he would be pleased to look into the points raised by the deputation, and if there were anomalies see what could be done to rectify the position. The two Acts referred to were important, and the points raised were fairly technical ones. He would discuss the matters raised with the department. • * « « THE ARBITRATION SYSTEM. “To summarise: During the first twelve years of the operation of the New Zealand arbitration system there were no strikes; during the next period of eight years strikes commenced again, but there were only five in all which should be considered; and during the last two periods 1921-1928—-there were practically no strikes during the war years, and only four of importance since the war ended, “ It must be noted that while prices were rising and the court was in a position to adjust wages upwards, there were strikes. This was only natural and to be expected. It does not, however, indicate, as certain recent critics have said it does, that the same result would have been obtained without an arbitration system. The industrial history of England during the last thirty-seven years gives the lie direct to that _ statement. Every student of this subject should read Lord Askwith’s book, ‘ Industrial Problems and Disputes,’ which presents both a history and an exhaustive analysis of the labour disputes in England from 1890 to 1922._ A comparison of the conditions existing in New Zealand with those described by Lord Askwith as existing in England during the same four periods is most instructive. “ Taking the first period—lß94 to 1900—prices were rising in England during the early part of the period just as they were in New Zealand. It is admitted now that wages had to be increased there just as they had to be increased here; but there the resemblance ends. While we in New Zealand had twelve years of industrial peace, the same period in England, particularly ip the years 1894 to 1900. was one of intensely bitter industrial strife. 'Practically every advance made by‘ the workers was, secured as a result of costly, wasteful "fighting; and further, the bitterness of the fighting was accentuated by the refusal of the employers’ organisations to recognise the trade unions or to meet the men’s official representatives. “ The number of strikes which have occurred in England since the passing

of the English Conciliation Act should bo an object lesson to those who in New Zealand are urging that some entirely optional system of conciliation should bo substituted for our present system of combined conciliation and arbitration.

“It is not necessary to discuss in detail the industrial disturbances of the next period, 190 Gto 1914. It is sufficient for our purpose to note that the position year by year became more serious, and the number of disputes which led to prolonged stoppages of work affecting almost the entire nation was greater than in the previous period. Of these disputes Lord Askwith writes: ‘ What is to be said about these disputes ? My own strong opinion is that they were economic. Trade had been improving, but employers thought too much of making money without sufficient' regard to the importance of considering the position of their work Hile at a time of improvement in e. Prices had been rising, but no sufficient increase in wages, and certainly no general increase, had fol. lowed the rise. It may be said that employers had waited too much on each other.’

“This,” continued Mr Bishop, “is an effective answer to those wno ara claiming that if there had been no arbitration system in New Zealand during the period of improvement in trade the workers would nave automatically received without strikes or dislocation of industry the wage increases to which they were entitled. “The history of the last two periods —that embracing the war and that embracing the subsequent years—should be fresh m every one’s mind. In England there were constant strikes which threatened the very, life of the nation in war years; and since tfoe war the engineering dispute, the two railway, and coal strikes, and the strike of seamen paralysed the trade of the country for long periods, delaying the recovery from war losses. England had no machinery for the peaceful settlement of the workers’ demands which resulted! from an alteration of prices. , In the absence of such machinery strikes followed the refusal by the owners of the workers’ appeals, and after the nation had suffered enormous loss from the strikes in each case the Government had itself to intervene.”—Mr T. Bishop, secretary of the Employers’ Federation, in a speech at the National Industrial Conference of 1928. * * « * TRADING IN IGNORANCE. Consumers have to be provided with money as much as producers for the system to work properly, the one providing the other in an endless circulation. For many a long day now the poverty of this country has been overwhelmingly artificial. People who are always insisting on the necessity of cutting down wages, economising in consumption, and increasing production, as an economic general principle rather than a temporary expedient, are trading on the ignorance of the public of this vital feature of the process. If they are not ignorant themselves, then they are merely the spokesmen of the creditor or rentier class, trying to reduce the price level and increase the real burden of the past indebtedness of the nation. Elsewhere they seem to see through these partisan politics more easily than in this country, where the public always seems ready to endure any hardship and to sanction any damage to its trade and industries in the interests of “ sound finance ” and “ raising British credit to a higher level.”—From ‘ Money versus Man,’ by Professor F, Soddy. .