WORKERS OPPOSE RETURN TO LONGER HOURS

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 280, 27 November 1939, Page 8

WORKERS OPPOSE RETURN TO LONGER HOURS

Railwaymen’s Views FAILURE OP "CAPITALISTIC ORTHODOXY’ * Per Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, Nov. 2d. Proposals to lengthen hours of work in New Zealand as a war emergency measure have drawn a strong protest from the Addingto-n branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. A resolution passed at a recent meeting states: “This branch desires to protest most emphatically against the recent resolutions passed by the Progress League and Chamber of Commerce in regard to the lengthening of hours of work and Government financial policy, particularly as it affects the control of banking in this country. "Members are definitely of the opinion that any move in the direction of lengthening of hours is as retro-1 gressive as it is unnecessary, and is not advocated from a patriotic motive but purely as a return to capitalistic orthodoxy, and they call upon all workers to support the Government in their endeavour to retain such reform to the last ditch, realising that it is much easier to go backwards than to make advances. Consequently, the gains already made should be held and cherished at all costs. “Notwithstanding the absolute failure of orthodox money and banking systems in years gone by, and even today, to bring about emancipation of the mass of the people, we view with the deepest possible feelings of regret the suggestion that the country should return to the former system of finance, with its consequent poverty, misery, degradation, starvation, bankruptcy and depression under the cloak of patriotism, and we urge all workers in general, and industrial workers in particular, to pay no heed to the bickerings of those who would use a patriotic cloak for the purpose of. lowering our living conditions for their personal aggrandisement and who are prepared to take us back to a form of orthodoxy and ruin such as the people of this country experienced a few short years ago. “We pledge ourselves to support the policy of the Government in this connection against all comers, and urge upon all workers everywhere to get behind the Government with all the strength they can muster, and defeat forever the force of capitalism and reaction in this wonderfully-endowed and very happy little country.”