PREFERENCE TO UNIONISTS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2084, 27 March 1922, Page 2

PREFERENCE TO UNIONISTS.

WHAT IT MEANS. MANAWATU FARMER'S OPINION A Manawatu farmer who has made a deep study of the question of preference to unionists, writes as follows: —"Preference to Unionists is not a boon. It is a boomerang, unique in that it hits back harder than it strikes forward; therefore, it is to be dreaded by unionists and all honest, workers. It is the lure of Lenin and all other politicians, whose law is expediency and whose bogey is principle. Preference compels employers to engage idle, careless, slow and incompetent workers. It depresses the expert and reliable, when they get no better pay than inferior workmen; therefore it is a wearing brake on the whole of industry. Preference makes the cost of living bear on the rate of wages till the poor man cannot make both ends meet. No man of sound judgment upholds the system. No unionist is content to pay another worker more than the value of his labour. Preference raises the cost of timber, bricks, roofing iron and all other building materials. It increases the cost of houses, and is largely responsible for high rents. This may be proved by looking up the cost of workmen's cottages lately erected by the Government and various public bodies. The producer is called upon to pay equal wages to trades unionists whether the work is inferior or otherwise; therefore it is only just that trades unionists should reciprocate. The fatmer gets twopence per pound for his beef. The consumer pays from threepence to eightpence per pound. The producer gets from 4Jd to 5i for his pork. It is retailed as bacon up to sixteen pence per pound. The pastoralist gets from 4id to Od for his wool, and his wife has to pay 150 pence per pound for skeins of darning material. Who knows how much of these differences is paid to good workmen, how much to poor ones, and how much to the incompetent who are compulsorily employed because the law supports preference to unionists? Who pays the incompetent, the slow, the careless and the men who take no pride in their work, You say, the employer or the boss; but the employer cannot afford to pay unless he can pass on the charges to the next man. Who is the next man? If he is a butcher or baker, a firewood dealer, grocer, builder or cabinetmaker, you know, do you not? If you do not, I do. Fair ■play is bonnie play. Preference to unionists is neither. What say you?"