SOME HIGH WAGES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4958, 20 February 1937, Page 5

SOME HIGH WAGES

EXAMPLES GIVEN IN COURT. Two examples of very highly paid labouring jobs were given in the Arbitration Court, Wellington, on Monday. In the first case, Mr. F. D. Cornwell, who was conducting the Wellington laundry workers’ dispute, said that dyeing used to be an exceptionally highly paid work, the regular wages -some years ago being £l6 a week. A man who was receiving that amount in Auckland was now working in Wellington at the same type of work at £6 weekly. “That shows you the drop in wages,” said Mr. Cornwell. “And, what is more, it is a highly specialised work. There are very few expert dyers in New Zealand.”

The second was that of an able seaman. A new award was made for seamen, under which able seamen are to be paid £lB a month, but it was. pointed out that an able seman on the Awatea, with his additional payment for being at sea on Sundays, will receive an increase of £5 4s during a month with four Sundays and £5 12s' during the four months of the year in which there are five Sundays, making his .total wages £23 4s and £23 12s respectively. That is an average of over £5 10s a week, but it is really worth more than that because they are fed and kept on board the ship by the company, with the result that they have no living expenses.

THE BAD OLD DAYS.

. SEAMEN’S WAGES. It is interesting to compare the wages paid to seamen thirty years ago with those paid to-day. The wages for able seamen on the wool ships for Home was £2 10s a month, with the diet a continuous round of “salt horse” and ship’s biscuits that would have made good road pavements. Sometimes there was soup in which you could see the bottom in two fathoms. Men on the coast were paid £4 10s a month, and the food was very much better than in the Home trade.