DAY LABOUR VERSUS CONTRACT.

Evening Star, Issue 21717, 11 May 1934, Page 12

DAY LABOUR VERSUS CONTRACT.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —It would be well for those contractors who favour the contract system to ponder well over the many and varied reasons that prompted many Governments and local bodies to carry on work by day labour. In New South Wales alterations to the specifications of a railway contract onco caused the costly litigation known as the MacSharry case, with the costs of professional witnesses, barristers with their briefs, refreshers, etc., to add some £300,000-to the ordinary cost. Litigation is one of the greatest unavoidable evils of the contract system, because new knowledge, through floods, etc., causes the specifications to be varied fom time to time. One has only to look at the original estimate of Mr M'Curdy for the Waipori dam. Geological * experts subsequently proved that if the dam were built where Mr M'Curdy proposed it might prove as disastrous as the Arapuni electric scheme. The result was that a more costly dam was started. Imagine a contract being let and such an alteration being insisted on. What extras that might mean and costly litigation for the council. The Dunedin Drainage Board had also some early contracting experiences in South Dunedin that involved it in compensation claims through collapsed trenches, as well as expenses to lift pipes that shifted ao that the work had to be done over again at the board’s expense. The writer once worked oli a contract in the city for a drainage contractor who. being a poor man, tried to avoid the expense of timber neces «ary to make the trench sale to prevent pipes from shifting and to safe "uard life. Protests caused him to irjve us the choice of getting off the job or risking the danger of collapsed trenches. The writer rang up the then drainage ■ engineer (Mr Slinger), to know (as necessary precautions to sateguard human life were not carried out)

would the Drainage Board, indemnify the men in the case of accident; ordinary compensation would not meet the case. The engineer suspended the work until the timbering was completed to bis satisfaction. But the trench collapsed just after we got out of it, and displaced the pipes, which had to be done over again. The writer can quote many instances of contract work being done over again by the old Drainage Board, and at its expense, for varied reasons, because time proved the work was faulty and when floods came it did not function because of faulty concealed work. If difficulties are enencountered the contractor abandons the work, as in the Shaw and Richardson contract on the foreshore. Some nine or ten years ago the Drainage Board, forgetting its old experiences, let a contract to some co-operative workmen to put in a tunnel from the foreshore and across the road under the Anderson’s Bay tram line, in spite of protests from the Labourers’ Union when Mr Evans was secretary. As the work neared completion a spring tide sent the, water through the tunnel, washing away the sand above the timbering. As the men were financially unable to fill in the cavity thus formed, which might have involved the council and the hoard in compensation claims through the danger of motor traffic causing a subsidence of the road, the Drainage Board at its own expense completed the work. The contract system means that the contractor milks the municipal cow while the going is good, but abandons his work when difficulties of an unpayable nature arise. In all the works carried out by the Drainage Board by day labour the fine plant Sid excellent timber have been so well used that there has not been an accident of not© nndcr day labour, and the board has been saved the expose of doing the work over again. The writer has shown such experts as Mr Peter Bowling, from Newcastle, Mr R. Semple, M.P., and many Labour men from different parts of Australia and New Zealand over the Drainage Board’s excavation work in Dunedin, and all of them have been loud in their praise, not only of the splendid timber used, but of the’ efficient way in which it was used under day labour. And it must be born© in mind that day labour was started in Dunedin long before a Labour man was elected to the City Council or the Drainage Board, so what is the good of people appealing to prejudice? If Labour supports it, it is because Labour believes it is bettor to mind your own business than pay men to mind your business for you, and it is Labour’s business to safeguard the lives of the workers and the property of the ratepayers. As the water scheme being tendered for is excavation work involving risk, why does not the City Council co-ordinate with the Drainage Board and use some of that body’s valuable timber and efficient timbermeu and supervisors? Who can tell what alterations experience may cause in the specifications? The Labour men and Mr Harrison are to be commended for their attitude.— I am, etc., J. E. MacManub. May 11.