SERVANTS’ PARLIAMENT

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 48, 26 February 1938, Page 12

SERVANTS’ PARLIAMENT

; 'Time For Shopping Demanded

“SERVANTS’ PARLIAMENT” has been held in the hall of the St. Stevens’ Association, in Budapest, to discuss the bettering of conditions for servants.

More than a thousand Budapest *naids, cooks, maids-of-all-work, and .Charwomen marched to the meeting •carrying silk flags and* dressed in many cases in the Hungarian version of the Austrian “dirndl” costume.

Speeches were made by all types of servant, from the smart young city maid to the stout cook and battered charwomen who do Budapest's dirty work.

The chief points urged by the servants were better sleeping conditions <the Budapest servant is often given a bed in a stone-floored kitchen or an unheatable garret), the right to use the bath once a week or to go to a public bath, permission to receive visits from female friends, and also from masculine friends “with honourable intentions,and adequate time for shopping.

One maid suggested that servants’ classes should be organised on the pattern of the apprentice schools, so that

servants might improve their writing, learn tc make up accounts, and improve themselves by reading good literature.

The charwomen speakers claimed that their class should also benefit by the insurance, and asked for the creation i f charwomen’s homes for the aged and sick.

A suggestion was put forward that the post-war name of “household employee” si): ild be abolished, and t! e old-fashioned name of “cseled” (servant) used by employers again. Formerly Hungarian peasants were used to call their children “cseled,” the custom dating from ancient times when servants (“cseled”) were regarded as members of the family (“csalad”). The “servants’ parliament” war, fol lowed by a sitting of the Catholic Housewives’ Association, and it was agreed that the servants’ law passed in 1876 must be reformed.

An old-age pension for servants and charwomen will be asked for, and the substitution of State servants’ agencies instead of the private agencies which prey on country girls who come to the city to work.