On 40-Hour Week

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20637, 18 August 1941, Page 3

On 40-Hour Week

Sir, —At the last meeting of the Gisborne branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners it was unanimously resolved to protest through your correspondence columns against Ihe attack that has been directed against the 40-hour week. Many organisations and individuals are proclaiming that the smashing of the 40-hour week would lead us to victory. Their wild assertions will meet with little approval of the workers of New Zealand when logic and facts are the need of the hour. The arguments and prejudices used against the first Factories Act have all been resurrected whenever there has been industrial reform placed on the Statute Book. Age-old prejudice dies hard, as modern experience lias demonstrated. Many of our members have rallied to the call of arms in defence of their country, their standard of living and working conditions, and many of our comrades have made the supreme sacrifice, knowing full well the consequences if Hitler won. Surely if these things are worth fighting for and dying for, they are worth preserving and maintaining. The presence of such outcry against the 40-hour week is hardly complimentary to our war arms and belies the existence in New Zealand of a free and enlightened democracy. C. C. SOMERVELL, Branch See.