REFORMS IN TURKEY

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 January 1926, Page 2

REFORMS IN TURKEY

NEW LABOUITCONDITIONS. Industrial reform in Turkey is proceeding along advanced lines. This is made very evident in a new Bill approved by the Turkish Council of Ministers and submitted to Parliament to improve the conditions of the workers in that country, details of which have just been received by the International Labour Office of the League of Nations. Among the important clauses of the Bill are the following : — Children who have not completed their twelfth year shall not be employed in public or private establishments ; they shall not be admitted to employment either as apprentices or as workers. \ . It is forbidden to employ in mines young persons who have not attained

their eighteenth year. Hours of labour shall not exceed sixty in the week in the establishments defined. At least one hour’s rest per day shall be given to the workers. The rest period, the period of prayer and the time required for the cleaning of the premises and for cleaning- and putting in order the machinery and tools shall be counted as hours of work- If the hours of work do not exceed six per day, the rest period is not compulsory, but if the hours of work at night exceed five, one hour’s rest shall be interposed among those hours. If the workers are required to travel as a group by rail, for example, from living quarters assigned to them by their employer, in order to reach their place of work, the time spent in going

and returning shall be counted as part of the daily ten hours’ labour. Hours of labour in mines or other underground occupations shall not exceed six per day. This period shall, as usual, be reckoned as regards each shift from the time when the first worker of the shift enters the mine to the time when the last worker of the shift leaves the mine. A rest period of at least one hour shall be given during these hours of labour. This rest period, and the period of prayer, shall be counted as hours of work. Nothing in this Act shall alter the conditions of the agreements hitherto made by certain establishments where

the hours of labour are fewer than ten per day. On the coming into operation of this Act, wages may not be reduced in the case of those workers who, as a result of agreement, have hitherto worked for more than ten hours a day, and whose, hours of work will be reduced under the Act. Any agreements the provisions of which conflict with this Act shall be mill and void. Except in the telephone service, it is forbidden to employ at night young persons of either sex who have not completed their seventeenth year. The period between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. is to be regarded as night. The progress which is being made in the care of the woman worker in India is revealed by the results of inquiries instituted by the Government of India into the extent to which maternity benefit schemes are in force in the various provinces, a summary of which is printed in “Industrial and Labour Information,” the weekly publication of the International Labour Office of the League of Nations. These inquiries show that employers have instituted a considerable number of schemes for the protection of women workers before and after childbirth. It is reported from Bengal that employers as a whole may be said to have voluntarily taken upon themselves the practical recognition of the principles under-lying the Maternity Convention adopted by the first session of the International Labour Conference, held at Washington in 1919, Its main provisions were absence from work for six weeks before and six weeks after confinement, with benefits sufficient for full and healthy maintenance and free medical attendance. At one mill in the Centra) Provinces two months’ wages are granted after confinement.- while at another three months’ half-pay is given. In a large number of cases particular attention is paid to medical care, and at the Bengal Iren Company’s works at Kulti, Asano!, treatment is given free by an expert staff trained by an English nurse.